The FARMS Review of Books has a long tradition of providing its readers with insightful and substantive reviews of books on the Book of Mormon, Mormon studies, and Christian studies, as well as those books that attack the beliefs of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The latest issue does not disappoint. It contains reviews and responses to 18 books or articles on diverse topics, such as ancient Nephite culture, the conversion of Alma, hidden ancient records, the temple, the LDS concept of the nature of God, and the ark of the covenant.

Each semester the Institute sponsors an average of six brown bag presentations (so named because they are informal lectures delivered during the noon hour). Held on the BYU campus, these events are conducted largely for the benefit of scholars and other specialists who are invited to report on research projects they are pursuing and papers they are writing. At the conclusion of their presentations, the speakers respond to questions and constructive comments from the audience. These events enable researchers to test and explore the ideas and insights they are developing on a host of topics related to the work of the Institute. In order to ensure a maximum amount of give-and-take between the presenters and the audience, attendance is limited to invited BYU faculty and staff as well as Institute personnel. Insights later reports on most of these presentations. Three such reports follow.

In Alma 24 we read of the courage of the people of Anti- Nephi-Lehi, Lamanites who had converted to the Lord. Their king pleaded with them, “Let us stain our swords no more with the blood of our brethren” (Alma 24:12). So great was their faith that they covenanted never to take up arms again and buried their weapons of war. When the unconverted Lamanites came against them, the Anti-Nephi- Lehies, rather than resist their attackers, prostrated themselves on the ground to pray and allowed their brethren to slay them.

The verb to seal occurs some 34 times in the Book of Mormon. In most of these instances the verb takes (is followed by) a direct object referring to such things as the law, a book, records, words, an account, an epistle, an interpretation, revelation, the truth, and the stone interpreters. Twice, however, the verb to seal takes a person as a direct object that is qualified by a possessive pronoun: Therefore, I would that ye should be steadfast and immovable, always abounding in good works, that Christ, the Lord God Omnipotent, may seal you his, that you may be brought to heaven, that ye may have everlasting salvation and eternal life, through the wisdom, and power, and justice, and mercy of him who created all things, in heaven and in earth, who is God above all. (Mosiah 5:15; emphasis added)

The Hôr Book of Breathings: A Translation and Commentary, by Michael D. Rhodes, treats the fragments of the Joseph Smith Papyri associated with Facsimiles 1 and 3 of the Book of Abraham. Available in March 2002.

A FARMS symposium at BYU on Saturday, 26 January, highlighted findings from a years-long effort to collect, translate, and publish ancient accounts of the early life of the patriarch Abraham. Titled “Traditions about the Early Life of Abraham,” the free public event featured presentations by John Tvedtnes, Brian Hauglid, and John Gee, compilers and editors of a new book of the same title published by the Institute under the FARMS imprint.

In defense of the historicity—the historical actuality—of scriptures embraced by Latter-day Saints, several BYU and Institute scholars have contributed to a collection of essays published recently by BYU’s Religious Studies Center. Edited by Paul Y. Hoskisson, Historicity and the Latter-day Saint Scriptures contains 11 essays that explore this topic.

Few literary genres from the ancient world stand out so prominently as the Near Eastern vassal treaty. Scholars have shown that these political contracts formed between vassal kings and suzerain provided the conceptual background for the book of Deuteronomy. “The assumption is that Israel conceived of its relation to Yahweh as that of subject peoples to a world king and that they expressed this relationship in the concepts and formulas of the suzerainty treaty.”

Very often in my work on the critical text of the Book of Mormon, I have discovered cases where the text reads inappropriately. Book of Mormon researchers have typically attempted to find some circumstance or interpretation to explain a difficult reading, but in many cases I have found that difficult readings are actually the result of simple scribal errors.

A new volume published under the Institute’s Research Press imprint is A Thematic Bibliography of Ancient Maya Writing, by Stephen D. Houston and Zachary Nelson. “Many people don’t know about the quantity of research on ancient Maya writing,” says Houston, a BYU professor of anthropology who is an authority on Maya writing. “In fact, the literature is overwhelmingly large. This bibliography provides a roadmap through that literature.”

A new publication from the Institute highlights the biblical research of a prominent British scholar. Kevin Christensen’s “Paradigms Regained: A Survey of Margaret Barker’s Scholarship and Its Significance for Mormon Studies,” the second issue of the FARMS Occasional Papers, compares the works of Margaret Barker with the writings of many Latter-day Saint researchers, including Hugh W. Nibley, Daniel C. Peterson, and John W. Welch.

Continuing a series of conferences on the Book of Abraham, the Institute sponsored “The World of Abraham,” a free public event at Brigham Young University on 23 March featuring new research that further illuminates the geographical and cultural horizons of the Book of Abraham. Institute executive director Daniel Oswald greeted a crowd of 350 people in the Tanner Building auditorium and dozens more in an overflow room. Many others viewed the event via delayed Web transmission a few hours later.

In touring southern Guatemala, many FARMS patrons traveled west of the capital city to visit Lake Atitlán, one of the most photogenic spots in Central America. Tour guides have told thousands that the beautiful “waters of Mormon” beloved by Alma and his people (see Mosiah 18:30) might well be Lake Atitlán. The Nephite record also tells us that a city called Jerusalem, which was constructed by Lamanites led by Nephite dissenters, was located “away joining the borders of Mormon” (Alma 21:1–2).

Each semester the Institute sponsors a series of brown bag presentations. These lectures give researchers the opportunity to present their latest findings to their peers in related fields and to receive constructive comment. Reports of four recent lectures follow.

Understanding Islam: An LDS Perspective, a new audiotape from Covenant Recordings in which Daniel C. Peterson, a BYU scholar of Islam and Arabic, provides a fascinating look at the history and beliefs of a religion of more than 1.4 billion adherents. See the order form.

The Hor Book of Breathings: A Translation and Commentary, by Michael D. Rhodes, treats the fragments of the Joseph Smith Papyri associated with Facsimiles 1 and 3 of the Book of Abraham.

Latter-day Saint scholar Terryl L. Givens has recently made two extraordinary contributions to Mormon studies. The first, Viper on the Hearth: Mormons,Myths, and the Construction of Heresy, was published by the prestigious Oxford University Press in 1997 and received virtually uniformly glowing reviews. If one wishes to understand the complex of interests and motivations—pecuniary, personal, and ideological—that fuel both sectarian and secular anti-Mormonism, Viper is the book to consult. The editors at Oxford appreciated the merits of this well-written, informative book and invited Givens to publish again with them. The result is By the Hand of Mormon: The American Scripture That Launched a New World Religion, published this year.

An interesting phenomenon concerning 1 and 2 Nephi is that parts of the latter book draw on the tree of life vision that Nephi and his father shared, as recorded in 1 Nephi 8, 11–15. In an earlier FARMS Update, John A. Tvedtnes demonstrated that Nephi drew on this vision when composing the psalm in 2 Nephi 4. Further study suggests the likelihood that Nephi’s exhortation in 2 Nephi 31 was similarly informed by that sublime vision.

Each year at about this time we remind graduate students about the Nibley Fellowship Program. Those interested in applying for the first time or who wish to renew their fellowships for the 2002/ 2003 academic year must do so by 30 June 2002.

In lieu of this year’s first issue of the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, a special report of the 20 October 2001 FARMS symposium on the Book of Mormon Critical Text Project will be mailed to FARMS subscribers with the next issue of the Insights newsletter.

The Hor Book of Breathings: A Translation and Commentary, by Michael D. Rhodes, treats the fragments of the Joseph Smith Papyri associated with Facsimiles 1 and 3 of the Book of Abraham. The book features hieroglyphs that were custom designed for this project. Available in June 2002.

BYU and Institute personnel recently traveled to Naples, Italy, to mark the completion of an Institute team’s work of digitally imaging 1,600 papyrus scrolls from the ancient city of Herculaneum. On 4 June the Institute’s Steve Booras, who supervised the team, and M. Gerald Bradford, associate executive director of the Institute, joined BYU professor Roger T. Macfarlane, the principal investigator of the Herculaneum papyri project, in presenting the final set of CDs containing the digitized images to Mauro Giancaspro, director of the library in Naples (the Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli) where the Herculaneum papyri are housed. They also presented a plaque commemorating the completion of the imaging.

In 1998 Jordan Vajda wrote a remarkable master’s thesis at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology in Berkeley, California, entitled “‘Partakers of the Divine Nature’: A Comparative Analysis of Patristic and Mormon Doctrines of Divinization.” The thesis is remarkable both for what it has to say and, perhaps even more strikingly, for who is saying it: Jordan Vajda is a Dominican Catholic priest. At the present time, he serves in the Catholic campus ministry at the Newman Center adjacent to the University of Washington in Seattle.

A recent issue of a popular journal on ancient Egypt discusses a number of sheets of gold foil incised with Egyptian writing. These artifacts provide some interesting parallels to the Book of Mormon.

FARMS has released volumes 3, 4, and 5 of an ongoing audiotape collection of essays titled Preparing for the Millennium, by renowned Latter-day Saint scholar Hugh W. Nibley. Read by Lloyd D. Newell, the audiotapes feature four essays from Nibley’s Approaching Zion and three essays from another volume in his collected works, The Prophetic Book of Mormon.

For a limited time, FARMS subscribers can obtain at special discount the first two volumes of the Book of Mormon critical text: The Original Manuscript of the Book of Mormon: Typographical Facsimile of the Extant Text and The Printer’s Manuscript of the Book of Mormon: Typographical Facsimile of the Entire Text in Two Parts, published by FARMS in 2001 (see the order form). For a full report on these essential resources for serious study of the Book of Mormon text, see the lead article in INSIGHTS 21/5 (2002).

A new book from FARMS offers a world of information about the New Testament and its background. Charting the New Testament contains scores of charts, tables, and graphs, each with helpful explanatory and reference materials in a reader-friendly format. Covering a wide array of topics-from the ancient Jewish setting of the New Testament and the world of the Greeks and Romans in which the activities of Jesus and his apostles took place to detailed analysis of the scriptural text itself-the book offers an extensive overview of matters doctrinal, literary, and historical. A companion volume to Charting the Book of Mormon, this handy resource is designed with both the student and the teacher in mind.

The Hor Book of Breathings: A Translation and Commentary, by Michael D. Rhodes, was recently published by FARJv1S. This landmark volume is a full publication of the Hor Book of Breathings ( the extant portions of the roll from which Facsimiles 1 and 3 of the Book of Abraham also derive) and includes a transliteration, translation, and philological commentary; a complete glossary of all Egyptian words in the surviving text; and both color and grayscale digital images of the papyri.

If God is good, why does he permit evil to exist? People through the ages have wrestled with this philosophical question, often called simply “the problem of evil.” The Bible contains one of the earliest works to address it-the book of Job.

The Institute’s Middle Eastern Texts Initiative has published the first two volumes in its Graeco-Arabic Sciences and Philosophy series: Moses Maimonides’ On Asthma and Averroes’ Middle Commentary on Aristotle’s De anima.

Scholars from BYU spoke at the recent FAIR (Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research) LDS Apologetics Conference held in August at Utah Valley State College, in Orem, Utah. FAIR, which is not affiliated with BYU or the Institute, is an organization dedicated to defending LDS beliefs and practices with sound scholarship. The theme of the conference was “Turning Stumbling Blocks to Stepping Stones: Responding to Challenging Issues in Mormonism.”

The Second Conference of Abbot Serenus 21, written about A.D. 426 by the Christian scholar John Cassian, sheds light on statements made in the Book of Mormon and the Book of Moses about Cain, who slew his brother Abel.

Several BYU and Institute scholars attended the joint annual meetings of the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature held in Toronto, Ontario, last November. In recent years this scholarly venue has enabled BYU entities specializing in religious scholarship to join ranks in the interest of promoting their recent publications while cultivating professional contacts, staying abreast of developments in the field, and presenting their research findings at conference sessions.

On 30 October John L. Clark, emeritus instructor in the Church Educational System, spoke on the topic “Painting Out the Messiah: Theologies of the Dissidents.” Clark began by showing that Lehi, Nephi, and Jacob all taught specifically about the Messiah but that dissidents like Sherem and Nehor opposed their teachings with “theologies” that denied Christ’s redemptive role and godhood, thereby causing many believers to lose faith. Clark then examined the arguments of the dissidents in the Book of Mormon to show what the prophets were teaching and what the objections to those teachings were. He discusses this topic at length in an article in the current issue of the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, mailed along with this newsletter.

The immediate situation that prompted Mosiah to institute a system of judges to govern the Nephites was the departure of his four sons. The people asked that Aaron be appointed king, but he and his brothers had gone to the land of Nephi to preach to the Lamanites and had renounced their claims to the monarchy (see Mosiah 29:1–6).

As announced in the last issue of Insights, the Institute invites interested persons to submit papers for possible presentation at an upcoming conference on Latter-day Saint views on the sacrifice of Isaac. The conference will be held at BYU on 11 October 2003.

On 29 January a capacity crowd gathered in the Harold B. Lee Library auditorium to hear BYU biology professor Michael F. Whiting address the topic “Does DNA Evidence Refute the Authenticity of the Book of Mormon? Responding to the Critics.” The size of the audience suggested the great interest people have in the role and limitations of DNA research in unlocking the past, especially the religious past.

On 13 November John F. Hall, professor of classical languages and ancient history at Brigham Young University, spoke about his new book, New Testament Witnesses of Christ: Peter, John, James, and Paul. The book draws on early Christian writings to show that the “four pillars” of early Christianity—Peter, John, James (the brother of Jesus), and Paul—consistently testified of the life and mission of Jesus Christ. The book is important, Hall believes, because many professing Christians, even many ministers, do not accept Christ as the literal Son of God even though the scriptures and the writings of the early church fathers are clear on the matter. In his book Hall also deals with issues of scholarly debate, such as whether the Gospel of John was the last biblical book written and whether tradition has judged Peter too harshly as a man of little faith and learning, that are illuminated by the Greek text and by an understanding of Greek culture. Hall’s book is divided into sections that review the backgrounds of the four pillars, apostolic authority, the Jewish world, and the Greek and Roman world.

Biblical scholar Margaret Barker has argued that Judaism was reformed initially in response to the discovery of the “book of the law” (2 Kings 22: 8; 2 Chronicles 34:14) in King Josiah’s time (reigned 640–609 B.C.) and later in response to the destruction of the Israelite monarchy and the experience of the exile. Those reforms were carried out by a priestly group known to scholars as the Deuteronomists, credited with editing the books of Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings (to celebrate Josiah and to address aspects of later Jewish history) and leaving a distinct imprint on the Hebrew Bible.

The Institute appreciates opportunities to facilitate meaningful scholarly discussion of Mormon studies. One recent instance was its cosponsorship of a conference titled “God, Humanity, and Revelation: Perspectives from Mormon Philosophy and History,” held at the Yale University Divinity School on 27–29 March. The event featured more than two dozen scholars and authors, including several Latter-day Saints. A report of the conference will appear in the next issue of Insights.

A set of meetings on the Institute’s Graeco-Arabic Sciences and Philosophy series (GrASP), a part of the Institute’s Middle Eastern Texts Initiative, will be held at the Library of Congress, in Washington, D.C. Under the joint sponsorship of the Library and the Institute, the event will include a meeting of GrASP’s international advisory board, a meeting of that board with key Library curators, and a public meeting on the field of Graeco-Arabic sciences and philosophy and on the aims and character of the series. Other possible events remain to be finalized. Watch the Web site for further details.

The FARMS Review (vol. 15, no. 1), edited by Daniel C. Peterson, contains reviews of a FARMS publication titled Uncovering the Original Text of the Book of Mormon: History and Findings of the Critical Text Project, Terryl L. Givens’s study of the Book of Mormon titled By the Hand of Mormon: The American Scripture That Launched a New World Religion (published by Oxford University Press), three books on the Book of Abraham, and an evangelical critique titled The New Mormon Challenge, initially treated in the last Review. The FARMS Review (formerly FARMS Review of Books) also includes a study of what was known about chiasmus at the time the Book of Mormon was produced. Beginning with this issue is a section called “Book Notes,” in which brief descriptions of recent books will be given. Available in late April.

Between 250 and 300 people took part on 27–29 March 2003 in a conference in New Haven, Connecticut, devoted to the subject of “God, Humanity, and Revelation: Perspectives from Mormon Philosophy and History.” The conference, hosted by the Divinity School of Yale University, was organized by Kenneth West, a Latter-day Saint graduate student there. The Institute for the Study and Preservation of Ancient Religious Texts was one of the conference sponsors.

Keeping step with its expanding role, The FARMS Review sports a new title and cover design. Further departures from tradition are the introduction, written for the first time by someone other than the founding editor; a book notes section; and a study relating to chiasmus that not only gives an update on contemporary works on the subject but also surveys those available in the 1820s.

In a letter to his son Moroni, Mormon warns against the practice of baptizing little children. He identifies two false assumptions of his day used to justify infant baptism: little children are born with sin (see Moroni 8:8) and will suffer divine punishment in hell if they die without having been baptized (see Moroni 8:13). While the exact nature of this aberrant practice is unknown, it was apparently common enough among the Nephites of Mormon’s day to warrant swift and unequivocal prophetic censure. Mormon describes the rite as particularly wicked and erroneous in light of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Noel B. Reynolds has been appointed director of the Institute. A professor of political science and a past president of FARMS, he recently completed a five-year term as associate academic vice president for undergraduate studies at BYU. Further coverage on this change in leadership will appear in a future issue of Insights.

During the week of 5–9 May, the Institute sponsored a visit by British biblical scholar Margaret Barker to Brigham Young University. Each morning, Barker offered a seminar (usually three hours in length) to a group of invited faculty and guests in which she summarized her research and numerous publications. She also delivered a university forum address during her stay, as well as an evening public lecture in the auditorium of the Harold B. Lee Library.

A parallel English-Arabic text of the Islamic philosophical work Iksir al-Arifin, or Elixir of the Gnostics, is the latest publication in the Islamic Translation Series, part of the Institute’s Middle Eastern Texts Initiative. The author, Sadr al-Din Muhammad Shirazi, better known as Mulla Íadrā (A.D. 1572–1640), is considered one of the greatest Islamic philosophers of the last 600 years and in recent years has become one of the most well known. Adept at finding flaws in the work of previous great thinkers, he was at the same time able to think independently of them, creating his own philosophical approach that he called “transcendent philosophy.” This approach combined reason, intellectual intuition, illumination, and revelation to arrive at truth.

In a previous report I showed how the Book of Mormon’s portrayal of Nephi, son of Lehi, compares favorably to a preexilic Hebrew wisdom tradition reconstructed by biblical scholar Margaret Barker.1 This report highlights further connections between the Book of Mormon and traditions from ancient Israel that Barker asserts “have been lost but for the accidents of archaeological discovery and the evidence of pre-Christian texts preserved and transmitted only by Christian hands.”

The Bulgarian National Museum of History in Sofia, Bulgaria, recently placed on public display an ancient book comprising six pages of 23.82-karat gold (measuring 5 centimeters in length and 4.5 centimeters in width) bound together by gold rings. The plates contain a text written in Etruscan characters and also depict a horse, a horseman, a Siren, a lyre, and soldiers. According to Elka Penkova, who heads the museum’s archaeology department, the find may be the oldest complete book in the world, dating to about 600 B.C.

Alma 1:15 records the execution of Nehor for the murder of Gideon: And it came to pass that they took him; and his name was Nehor; and they carried him upon the top of the hill Manti, and there he was caused, or rather did acknowledge, between the heavens and the earth, that what he had taught to the people was contrary to the word of God; and there he suffered an ignominious death.

With fall semester under way at Brigham Young University, we look forward to keeping you abreast of another round of Institute-sponsored brown bag lectures. These presentations, which are not open to the general public, enable researchers to share their expertise and findings with their peers in related fields and to receive constructive input. Following are reports of three such presentations from earlier this year.

Three Institute researchers were among the speakers at the fifth annual FAIR conference, held August 7–8 at Utah Valley State College, in Orem, Utah. Founded in 1997, the Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research is a nonprofit corporation dedicated to providing sound information and research that support the doctrine, beliefs, and practices of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, particularly on matters that are challenged by unbelievers.

The Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution have opened an exhibit titled “Ancient Manuscripts from the Desert Libraries of Timbuktu,” the famous trading town at the edge of the Sahara Desert in Mali. The manuscripts include Qur’anic teachings, mathematics, physics, medicine, and astronomy.

A majority of people in the modern world are absorbed in performing their daily work, conceived in terms of jobs, money, food, and other things practical and economic. Would it have been different for the Nephites or Lamanites? Not really. The center of their daily concerns, too, was “making a living.” But what that meant differed greatly from what we mean by the expression.

As I have been working on the Book of Mormon Critical Text Project, people have occasionally written or talked to me about passages in the Book of Mormon that seem strange or difficult. A good many have made specific suggestions about emendations (or revisions to the text). Surprisingly, a large percentage of these have ended up being correct or have led me to come up with an appropriate emendation.

Astronomy, Papyrus, and Covenant, edited by John Gee and Brian Hauglid, is volume 3 in the Book of Abraham Series. It includes FARMS conference papers on the Book of Abraham and its commonalities with ancient texts, Abraham’s vision of the heavens, and the significance of the Abrahamic covenant. Available autumn 2003.

Nephi and his brothers referred to Jerusalem as “that great city” (1 Nephi 2:13). Their opposing views about it became a point of contention that tore Lehi’s family in two, and their memories of it influenced the cultural perspective of their descendants in the New World for dozens of generations. The people known as Lamanites longed after it as a lost paradise and named one of their lands of settlement in its honor (Alma 21:1). Among the Nephites it exemplified the dire consequences of unbelief (Helaman 8:20). But what was the Jerusalem of Lehi’s day really like?

An earlier Insights article noted a possible wordplay in the first verse of the Book of Mormon that provides internal textual evidence that the name Nephi derives from the Egyptian word nfr. While nfr denotes “good, fine, goodly” of quality, it also signifies “beautiful, fair” of appearance. Assuming that at least some senses of the Egyptian word passed into Nephite language and culture, this second sense of nfr may have influenced Nephite self-perception. Several Book of Mormon passages evidence the affiliation.

A recent article in the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies reported that ice cores taken from Greenland and Antarctica yield evidence broadly consistent with the 3 Nephi 8 account of cataclysmic New World events—presumably including a violent volcanic eruption—at the time of Christ’s death (Benjamin R. Jordan, “Volcanic Destruction in the Book of Mormon: Possible Evidence from Ice Cores,” JBMS 12/1 [2003]: 78–87). What other methods might yield corroborating evidence of such an eruption? Two possibilities are the analysis of tree rings and sea and lake sediments.

With the recent publication of The Book of Mormon: A Reader‘s Edition, Grant Hardy has provided the members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints with a remarkable new version of their founding text. Although Hardy gears his book to a broad readership, those who truly love the Book of Mormon, seek to be serious students of it, or both will find A Reader’s Edition well worth owning. Why? Because in this edition the text is displayed not in verse format but in discrete, sub-headed sections of greater length with ease of reading the end in view.

In February 2001, a conference titled “Hebrew Law in the Book of Mormon” was held at Brigham Young University under the sponsorship of FARMS (see “BYU Conference on Hebrew Law a Success,” Insights 21/4 [2001], available on the FARMS Web site). Among the papers presented there were studies by seven BYU students on aspects of ancient law that might be reflected in the Book of Mormon. These papers are now available in a special issue, copublished by FARMS, of the student journal Studia Antiqua. They treat such topics as slavery, the Noachide laws (minimum standards of social and moral conduct revealed through Noah and thus binding on all humanity), false prophecy, blasphemy and reviling, the status of women in ancient Jewish law, and legal protections for widows and the fatherless.

The FARMS Review (vol. 15, no. 2), edited by Daniel C. Peterson, features reviews and articles on DNA issues, the Mountain Meadows massacre, and secret combinations, as well as responses to a so-called insider’s view of Mormon origins. Available February 2004.

Dead Sea Scrolls Reader, edited by Donald W. Parry and Emanuel Tov, presents all of the nonbiblical Qumran texts along with English translations. Published by Brill Academic Publishers of the Netherlands, this six-part edition of the nonbiblical scroll fragments is an outgrowth of the FARMS Dead Sea Scrolls database. Parts 1 (religious law), 2 (exegetical texts), and 4 (calendrical and sapiental texts) are available now; parts 3 (parabiblical texts), 5 (poetic and liturgical texts), and 6 (additional genres and unclassified texts) will be available in spring 2004.

The latest issue of the FARMS Review (vol. 15, no. 2, 2003) responds in full measure to two works challenging the historicity of the Book of Mormon and the foundational events of the restored Church of Jesus Christ. The contributing scholars not only expose fatal flaws in the critics’ arguments and methods but also provide background information and perspectives that readers will find instructive. In addition, this issue of the Review evaluates several other recent publications in Mormon studies and includes a Book of Mormon bibliography for 2002.

In one of the more moving narratives found in the Book of Mormon, a group of Lamanites are miraculously prevented from killing the prophets Nephi and Lehi in a prison. The Lamanites and Nephite dissenters are then redeemed from their own spiritual bondage when they are converted to Christ.

On 10 October 2003, Father Columba Stewart presented an Institute-sponsored lecture at BYU titled “The Practices of Egyptian Monastic Prayer: Desert, Cell, and Community.” Fr. Stewart is a Benedictine monk of St. John’s Abbey, Collegeville, Minnesota, where he is professor of theology at St. John’s School of Theology and teaches monastic studies. He is also the interim director of the Hill Monastic Manuscript Library, which is working closely with the Institute on its manuscript preservation projects in the Middle East and Ethiopia.

Most modern historians view social, economic, and political factors as the sole shaping influences of history. For other scholars, the role of divine providence in history cannot be denied and is a topic worthy of serious consideration. Last year, Latter-day Saint scholars who embrace the notion of “providential history” shared their perspectives at a symposium titled “A Latter-day Saint View of History,” held at Brigham Young University on 6–7 February 2003. Among the 21 presenters at this unique event was John W. Welch, publications director for the Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Latter-day Saint History, editor in chief of BYU Studies, and founder and board member of FARMS.

FARMS Occasional Papers, Volume 4, edited by Jared Ludlow (BYU–Hawaii) and Larry E. Morris, contains articles by three BYU professors and focuses on the polemical use of water and storm language in the Deuteronomic History (Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, and 1 and 2 Kings), justice and mercy in the book of Deuteronomy, and the garment of Joseph.

On 19 March 2004, at the invitation of Brigham Young University president Cecil O. Samuelson, Institute executive director Noel B. Reynolds led some 200 members of the President’s Leadership Council and university deans and directors through an overview of the work of FARMS and the Institute. Th e purpose of the two-hour presentation was to reprise the Institute’s activities that are having a positive impact on the international academic scene and on other fronts in ways that add luster to the university.

As is well known, when the words of the Book of Mormon were translated “by the gift and power of God,” there was no punctuation at all in the early manuscripts, and that is the way the translated text was delivered to E. B. Grandin’s print shop. Type-setter John Gilbert reported that when he sat down to prepare the text for publication, “every chapter . . . was one solid paragraph, without a punctuation mark, from beginning to end.”¹ So he added punctuation and paragraphing as he went along. He did a good job, especially for someone reading the book for the first time, but there are a few sentences that could have been punctuated in more than one way, with slightly different results. Since the punctuation of the Book of Mormon does not enjoy the same revealed status as the words themselves, it may be worth considering some of the alternatives.

FARMS’s publication earlier this year of Glimpses of Lehi’s Jerusalem was a significant milestone in Book of Mormon studies. The prodigious effort marshaled the research talents of 19 BYU scholars in a multidisciplinary reconstruction of Lehi’s Old World environment. Those who acquaint themselves with this groundbreaking research will read 1 Nephi with new eyes—with a greater awareness of the sociocultural context and lifeways of Lehi’s world.

In “Who Controls the Water? Yahweh vs. Baal,” the lead article in Occasional Papers 4, Fred E. Woods presents a fascinating discussion of the polemical usage of water and storm language in the Deuteronomic History (the books of Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings). As Woods notes, the most active deity at the Canaanite city of Ugarit (located in present-day Syria near the Mediterranean coast) is Baal, the god of water and storm. The strong denunciation of Baal in the Old Testament indicates that the Baal cult had deeply penetrated Israelite culture. And while scholars have long been aware of the explicit warnings against worshipping Baal, the metaphorical arguments against Baal have gone virtually unnoticed.

Each year at about this time we remind graduate students about the Nibley Fellowship Program and its application deadline. Named in honor of Hugh Nibley, this program provides financial aid to students enrolled in accredited PhD programs in areas of study directly related to the work and mission of the Institute, particularly work done under the name of FARMS—studies of the Book of Mormon, the Book of Abraham, the Old and New Testaments, early Christianity, ancient temples, and related subjects. Applicants cannot be employed at the Institute or be related to an Institute employee.

Astronomy, Papyrus, and Covenant, edited by John Gee and Brian Hauglid, is the third volume in the Book of Abraham Series. It includes papers from a FARMS-sponsored conference on the Book of Abraham and covers such topics as Abraham’s vision of the heavens, commonalities between the Book of Abraham and noncanonical ancient texts, and the significance of the Abrahamic covenant. Available summer 2004.

BYU and Institute scholars gave presentations at all five sessions of the Rocky Mountain–Great Plains regional meeting of the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature on 26–27 March 2004. Because several sessions took place on the BYU campus for the first time, and because one-third of the 51 presenters were BYU-affiliated scholars (8 of them closely associated with the Institute), the event was an ideal opportunity for the university to showcase its contributions to religious scholarship.

Genesis 22 records that God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac upon an altar but intervened at the last moment, providing instead a ram for the actual sacrifice and greatly blessing Abraham for passing what has come to be viewed as the ultimate test of obedience to God’s will. The account, simple enough in outline, is nevertheless seen by different religious traditions as profoundly symbolic and even enigmatic, its moral and religious implications having spawned numerous interpretations.

Historian Richard L. Bush-man, responding to accusations that the Book of Mormon contains “evidence of nineteenth-century American political culture,” concluded that in fact “most of the principles tradition-ally associated with the American Constitution are slighted or disregarded altogether” in the book. “So many of the powerful intellectual influences operating on Joseph Smith failed to touch the Book of Mormon.”

In March the Institute cosponsored a lecture series at Brigham Young University titled “Christianity in the Middle East.” The series provided a historical overview of the eastward spread of Christianity into the pagan Near East, a subject largely neglected in religious and socio-cultural studies. Over many centuries, Christian groups maintained a presence in the region, leaving behind a notable literary, monumental, and artistic legacy that is increasingly being recognized as an important part of the world’s cultural heritage.

This is an excerpt from a dinner speech that FARMS founder John W. Welch gave to members of the FARMS Development Council on 19 March 2004. An evening like this, which begins our commemoration of the 25th anniversary of FARMS, makes me think back to our founding days in 1979. Keeping alive the memory of foundation stories, of creation accounts, is part of keeping on track for the future.

Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, Part 1,by Royal Skousen, is the first part of volume 4 of the Book of Mormon Critical Text Project. Covering the title page through 2 Nephi 10, it analyzes every significant variant in the original and printer’s manuscripts and in 20 important editions of the Book of Mormon (from the 1830 edition to the 1981 edition). The task of this volume is to use the earliest textual sources and patterns of systematic usage to recover the original English-language text. Available August 2004.

Elegantly produced and weighing in at 652 pages, the first part of volume 4 in Professor Royal Skousen’s ongoing Book of Mormon critical text project has just come from the press. Volumes 1 and 2, containing transcripts of the original manuscript and the printer’s manuscript of the Book of Mormon, were published by FARMS in 2001. Volume 3, which will describe the history of the Book of Mormon text from Joseph Smith’s original dictation through the current standard editions, will appear after all parts of volume 4 have been published. Volume 3 will include a complete analysis of the grammatical editing of the Book of Mormon.

At nearly 500 pages, the latest issue of the FARMS Review (vol. 16, no. 1) continues its pattern of offering wide-ranging coverage and in-depth analysis aimed at encouraging reliable scholarship and helping readers make informed judgments about recent publications in the field of Mormon studies.

Near the end of his life, the prophet Nephi referred to the day of judgment and declared that we, the readers of the Book of Mormon, will stand face to face with him before the bar of Christ (2 Nephi 33:11). Similarly, the prophets Jacob and Moroni referred to meeting us when we appear before “the pleasing bar” of God to be judged.

Brigham Young University’s Herculaneum papyri project continues to gain support among American and European scholars. The project’s director, Roger T. Macfarlane, an associate professor of classics at BYU, was invited to serve on the organizing board of the nascent Herculaneum Society, which was inaugurated in Oxford, England, on 3 July 2004. The society promotes inter-national attention on scholarship and fund-raising related to the ancient town of Herculaneum and its Villa of the Papyri. Together with David Arm-strong, a classics professor at the University of Texas at Austin, Macfarlane will direct the North American division of the Herculaneum Society. “There is no secret,” he says, “that the society is eager to capitalize on our project’s success.”

Attention to exegesis in and of the Hebrew Bible has much to offer Latter-day Saint students of scripture in their efforts to understand the biblical text.*Exegesis is the explanation or interpretation of a text. The word is derived from Greek, meaning literally “to lead out (of).” The general study of biblical exegesis has come to incorporate at least three subdivisions, each having direct relevance for Latter-day Saints: inner-biblical allusion, biblical and postbiblical exegesis, and scribal comments and corrections.

Journal of Book of Mormon Studies(vol. 13, nos. 1–2), edited by S. Kent Brown, is a special double issue devoted to the Hill Cumorah. Studies include the geologic history and archaeology of the area, early accounts of a cave in the hill, the Hill Cumorah Pageant (its history, music, and costuming), Latter-day Saint poetry, the Hill Cumorah Monument, a linguistic analysis of the name Cumorah, and the earliest photographs of the hill. Available late fall 2004.

During a recent meeting of the FARMS Development Council, four principal investigators on Book of Mormon–related projects reviewed the status of their ongoing work. The reports clarified each project’s goals, highlighted new findings, noted future directions, and expressed appreciation for the crucial support of generous donors, many of whom were in attendance. A summary of the presentations follows.

One of the most enduring archaeological hoaxes, the Michigan relics, a series of copper, slate, and clay forgeries, were “discovered” throughout counties in Michigan from the late 19th century until 1920. James Scotford and Daniel Soper apparently worked together to create and sell the forgeries. Scholars and archaeologists were skeptical from the outset, but interest in the objects persisted. In 1911 James E. Talmage studied the relics, recognizing the impact they could have on the perception of the Book of Mormon if they were genuine. In a detailed report, Talmage dismissed them as blatant forgeries.

Nephi was the only Book of Mormon author to receive what might be called a classical Hebrew education. He had ambivalent feelings about his training—indeed, he specifically noted that the tradition would end with himself: “I . . . have not taught my children after the manner of the Jews” (2 Nephi 25:6; see vv. 1–2). So it is not surprising that he remains the most literate, book-learned of the Nephite prophets. That is to say, his writings exhibit the most connections with earlier prophecies and texts, and he structures his teachings in a way that suggests he is working from written documents. In particular, he is eager to tie his own visions of the future of the House of Israel to the words of Isaiah, and his commentary at 1 Nephi 22—where he weaves phrases from the two Isaiah chapters he has just quoted into a new revelatory discourse—is a masterpiece of prophetic interpretation. The same style of commentary, which by placing familiar phrases into new contexts reinterprets as it explains, is found in a slightly more diffuse form at 2 Nephi 25–30.

A recent New York Times article reported new developments in the research on two ancient silver scrolls discovered in Jerusalem’s Hinnom Valley in 1979 and subsequently dated to the late seventh century BC . They were engraved with words that appeared to be text from Numbers 6:24–26. How-ever, because of the aging of the metal, researchers were unable to read several of the inscriptions and thereby confirm the age of the scrolls.

In 1998 FARMS’s longtime interest in advancing research supportive of the Book of Abraham as an ancient text found new emphasis and direction as a formalized FARMS project, an impetus made possible by a farsighted donor: the Robert Gay family. Soon a working group of scholars was convened to exchange research and ideas on the text. The resulting exchange of information led to FARMS-sponsored public lectures and a scholarly conference in 1999. The next year saw publication of John Gee’s Guide to the Joseph Smith Papyri and, fortuitously, an enlarged edition of Hugh Nibley’s Abraham in Egypt (a project years in the making). Following in short order were the first two volumes in the Studies in the Book of Abraham series—Traditions about the Early Life of Abraham (2001) and The Hor Book of Breathings (2002)—and a “World of Abraham” symposium and scholarly conference in 2002.

In ancient Israel, the household was the center of a woman’s life and the place in which she held the most power. Even though a child was born into “the house of the father” (bet

Journal of Book of Mormon Studies(vol. 13, nos. 1–2), edited by S. Kent Brown, is a special double issue devoted to the Hill Cumorah. Studies include the geologic history and archaeology of the area, early accounts of a cave in the hill, the Hill Cumorah Pageant (its history, music, and costuming), Latter-day Saint poetry, the Hill Cumorah Monument, a linguistic analysis of the name Cumorah, and the earliest photographs of the hill. Available December 2004.

2004In any given year, FARMS-affiliated scholars present their research at a number of scholarly conferences at home and abroad. Brigham Young University’s Sidney B. Sperry Symposium in Octo-ber 2004, entitled “Prelude to the Restoration: From Apostasy to the Restored Church,” was one such venue on the home front. Selected highlights follow.

What we have of Jesus’s ministry to the Nephites is an abridged version because the Lord wished to “try the faith of [his] people” (3 Nephi 26:6–13). Dutiful to his charge, Mormon did not provide a full account of Jesus’s teachings, but his son Moroni provided three quotations of portions that his father did not.

Reading King Benjamin’s speech, we come upon a passage in which the verb list is used four times: “Beware lest there shall arise contentions among you, and ye list to obey the evil spirit. . . . For behold, there is a wo pronounced upon him who listeth to obey that spirit; for if he listeth to obey him, and remaineth and dieth in his sins, the same drinketh damnation to his own soul. . . . The man that doeth this, the same cometh out in open rebellion against God; therefore he listeth to obey the evil spirit, and becometh an enemy to all righteousness” (Mosiah 2:32, 33, 37).

Apostles and Bishops in Early Christianity, by Hugh W. Nibley, edited by John F. Hall and John W. Welch, presents an edited, expanded version of Hugh Nib-ley’s verbatim lecture “notes” that he prepared for a course he taught in 1954. Extensive footnotes have been developed from Nibley’s cryptic source notations. In this course, Nibley explored the offices of apostle and bishop, the priesthood authority associated with them, and questions of succession in the early church and in Rome. Copublished with Deseret Book, it will appear as volume 15 in the Collected Works of Hugh Nibley. Available early 2005.

Hugh Winder Nibley (27 March 1910–24 February 2005) was a gifted writer, a prolific author, a first-class scholar, and, above all, a committed member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

At first light on 6 June 1944, the first of many Allied landing craft began hitting the beaches of Normandy. At Utah Beach, 12 men dangling from one of the emerging jeeps cheered their driver on as they surged up from beneath the surface of the chilly English Channel waters. That driver, an army intelligence officer with a PhD in ancient history from the University of California at Berkeley, was none other than Hugh W. Nibley, age 34.

Those of us who saw the recent television documentary American Prophet: The Story of Joseph Smith may have noticed an interesting defect in the script, namely, that it was Hamlet with Hamlet left out. It was as if one were to produce the life of Shakespeare with charming views of Stratford-upon-Avon, country school, the poaching story, marriage to Anne Hatha-way, showbiz in London, and respectable retirement without bothering to mention that our leading character gave the world the greatest treasury of dramatic art in existence. Or a life of Bach with his niggardly brother-guardian, his early poverty, his odd jobs with local organs and choirs, his acceptance in the courts of the Holy Roman Empire, his nineteen children, and his loving nature without a word about the greatest volume of music ever produced by a mortal.

FARMS is pleased to announce the release of a new volume of previously unpublished class lectures by celebrated Latter-day Saint scholar Hugh Nibley, who recently passed away at age 94. Apostles and Bishops in Early Christianity, volume 15 in the Collected Works of Hugh Nibley series, comprises Nibley’s finely detailed lecture notes for a course he taught at Brigham Young University in 1954 on the office of bishop in the early Christian church.

The latest FARMS Review (vol. 16, no. 2, 2004) is another weighty issue flush with articles covering a wide array of interesting topics. In the lineup are reviews of works on Book of Mormon geography, de-Christianization of the Old Testament, the Joseph Smith Papyri, Isaiah’s central message, Jerusalem in Lehi’s day, creation theology, gospel symbolism, and the Christian countercult movement. Also included are two freestanding essays, one older article of lasting appeal (initiating a new feature in the Review), book notes, a 2003 Book of Mormon bibliography, and the editor’s top picks of recent publications. A foretaste of the many engaging articles follows.

Latter-day Saint scholars Hugh W. Nibley and John A. Tvedtnes have discussed at length how a staff, rod, and sword came to be commonly identified with the word of God in the ancient Near East.¹The evidence they cite from the Bible, the earliest Hebrew commentators, modern biblical scholarship, and elsewhere affirms Nephi’s unambiguous assertion that the “word of God” is a “rod.”

In 2001 the chance discovery of a 2,000-year-old Maya mural in a chamber buried beneath a pyramid in the Guatemalan jungle stirred the archaeological community. It was a sensational find, one of the most important for Mayanists in half a century. Rendered in brilliant colors with exquisite skill, the remarkably well-preserved mural reveals a highly sophisticated artistic tradition and hieroglyphic script predating the Maya’s golden age by 800 years.

A new multivolume work promises to facilitate study of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Dead Sea Scrolls Reader, published by the prestigious academic publisher E. J. Brill, offers transcriptions and English translations of all the nonbiblical Qumran texts.

In recognition of the bicentennial of the Prophet Joseph Smith’s birth, the Library of Congress, in Washington DC, hosted an academic conference on 6–7 May 2005 titled “The Worlds of Joseph Smith.” Carried internationally via webcast, the event featured 17 scholars (nearly evenly divided between Latter-day Saints and those of other faiths) who examined Joseph Smith’s theological contributions and evaluated the claim that the church he founded is on track to becoming a world religion.

FARMS has teamed with award-winning Latter-day Saint filmmaker Peter Johnson to produce a documentary on Lehi and company’s route from Jerusalem to the New World. Based on the most recent research, the 90-min-ute DVD documentary will feature Latter-day Saint scholars commenting on proposed sites for the party’s first base camp near the Red Sea; Nahom, where Ishmael was buried; and Bountiful, the fertile coast-al locale where Nephi directed the building of his ship. The documentary will also feature the latest findings on Lehi’s ocean voyage and explore candidates for Book of Mormon sites in Mesoamerica.

This report covers the proceedings of the second day of “The Worlds of Joseph Smith,” an academic conference held on 6–7 May 2005 at the Library of Congress, in Washington DC, in recognition of the bicentennial of the Prophet Joseph Smith’s birth. For a report of the first day of proceedings, see the article in Insights 25/3 (2005).

A much­-anticipated book exploring the root causes of the early Christian apostasy is now off the press: Early Christians in Disarray: Contemporary LDS Perspectives on the Christian Apostasy, edited by Noel B. Reynolds and published by FARMS and BYU Press.

FARMS and Brigham Young University are pleased to announce the release of part 2 of volume 4 of the Book of Mormon Critical Text Project, Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon. Part 2 analyzes the text from 2 Nephi 11 through Mosiah 16.

Since their initial discovery in 1947, the Dead Sea Scrolls have drawn the interest of people world­wide. FARMS has been fortunate to play a part in bringing the scrolls to the world, and that effort continues. The FARMS Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit, sponsored by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-­day Saints and managed by full­time missionaries Wayne and Janet Chamberlain, completed its tour of the United Kingdom and western Europe in May and is now making its way through central Europe.

In June Brigham Young University announced the appointment of Andrew C. Skinner as the new executive director of the Institute for the Study and Preservation of Ancient Religious Texts. Skinner, a professor of ancient scripture at BYU who has served as dean of Religious Education since 2000, replaces Noel B. Reynolds, who was called to pre-side over the Florida Fort Lauderdale Mission of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Astronomy, Papyrus, and Covenant, the third volume in FARMS’s Studies in the Book of Abraham, was recently published and is now available. This book deals with three broad themes: astronomy in the Book of Abraham, the background of the Joseph Smith Papyri, and the nature of the Abrahamic covenant. In the course of treating these subjects, various papers discuss Jews in Ptolemaic Egypt, commonalities between the Book of Abraham and ancient Islamic texts, accounts of Abraham in 19th-century America, and a number of other interesting issues. All but 3 of the 12 articles were initially presented as papers at a BYU conference on the Book of Abraham.

In my work as editor of the Book of Mormon Critical Text Project (which began in 1988), I was initially interested in discovering the original English-language text of the book. But I soon came to the conclusion that it would be impossible to fully recover the original text by scholarly means, in large part because only 28 percent of the original manuscript is extant. In addition, there are obvious errors in the original manuscript itself that require conjectural emendation. As I have worked on the text of the Book of Mormon, I have come to some surprising conclusions regarding the nature of the original text itself, conclusions that I had not at all expected when I started my work transcribing the original and printer’s manuscripts of the Book of Mormon.

Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri,edited by John Gee and Michael Rhodes, is a second edition of Hugh Nibley’s 1975 book of the same title on the Egyptian endowment. It is still the only book-length treatment of the important Egyptian text now known as the “Document of Breathings Made by Isis,” a copy of which was found among the Joseph Smith Papyri. The new edition features previously excised material, corrections of numerous typographical errors, improved illustrations, and accurate placement of illustrations in the text. This book, published jointly with Deseret Book, is now at press after years of intense effort. Because of a recent concerted push to finish this project, the FARMS Review and Journal of Book of Mormon Studies are running late.

After years of intense effort, the long-overdue second edition of Hugh Nibley’s 1975 book The Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri: An Egyptian Endowment is at press. This new edition has been meticulously pre-pared by BYU Egyptologists John Gee and Michael D. Rhodes, who upgraded this Nibley classic on many points (some unseen, others impossible to miss, such as the superior illustrations by Michael Lyon) while preserving the original con-tent. Published by FARMS and Deseret Book, this edition is a fitting tribute to Nibley’s pioneering work and will enable a new generation of students and scholars to profit from Nibley’s enduring insights into an area of perennial interest for Latter-day Saints.

The latest issue of the FARMS Review (vol. 17, no. 1) is now available, offering its usual in-depth, incisive commentary on an array of recent publications and topics of interest to Latter-day Saint readers. This is the first issue published since Hugh Nibley’s death earlier this year, and Louis Midgley’s tribute to this illustrious Latter-day Saint scholar has already proved to be one of the more popular contributions. The essay is essentially an intellectual autobiography in which Midgley (BYU professor emeritus of political science and associate editor of the Review) tells of his first encounter with Nib-ley, in 1949; his subsequent studies under Sterling McMurrin, a prominent philosophy professor at the University of Utah who dismissed the Book of Mormon out of hand; his dissertation on the work of theologian Paul Tillich, who viewed God not as a personality but as the ultimate ground of being; and of Nibley’s profound influence.

The Book of Mormon has come under frequent fire from its critics for allegedly quoting portions of the New Testament before the New Testament was written. A classic example of this is the famous phrase from 1 Corinthians 15:55, “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” Clear allusions to this passage are made by three Book of Mormon prophets: Abinadi (Mosiah 16:8), Aaron (Alma 22:14), and Mormon (Mormon 7:5).

In 1988 Hugh W. Nibley noted that the use of terms based on the word atone (atonement, atoning, atoned, etc.), while used in the Old Testament mostly in association with rites performed in the tabernacle of Moses, clearly tied the Nephites to preexilic Israel, that is, prior to the Babylonian captivity of the Jews in 587 bc. He found that most of the occurrences were “in the books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, where they explicitly describe the original rites of the tabernacle or temple on the Day of Atonement.”

Theodore Abū Qurrah, translated and introduced by John C. Lamoreaux of Southern Methodist University, includes first-ever English translations of a substantial portion of Theodore Abū Qurrah’s writings, which treat such issues as the characteristics of true religion and the nature of free will. Abū Qurrah (fl. ad 810), the bishop of Haran (in modern-day southern Turkey), was one of the first Christians to write in Arabic and to mount a sustained theological defense of Christianity against Islam. This book is now at press and will be distributed by the University of Chicago Press and made available through the BYU Bookstore.

Brigham Young University’s Board of Trustees recently approved the renaming of BYU’s Institute for the Study and Preservation of Ancient Religious Texts (ISPART) to the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship.

One of the misconceptions that many Westerners have is that all Arabs are Muslims and that all Muslims are Arabs. In fact, many of the major Islamic countries in the world (e.g., Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Malaysia, and the most populous of them all, Indonesia) are not Arab, and large minorities in some Arab countries are not Muslim. Christianity is a Near Eastern religion, not a European one, and it has been in the Near East since its origin. (An Egyptian Christian friend once complained to me about how tired he had become of Americans and Europeans asking him whether his family had been converted by the Germans, the French, or the British. His ancestors, he pointed out, had been converted by Mark, the writer of the Second Gospel, in the first century ad. My own forebears, in Scandinavia, didn’t accept Christianity until roughly a millennium later.)

Golden Road: The Ancient Incense Trail, a new FARMS documentary about the legendary route used by Arabia’s incense traders, premiered at the Washington DC Temple Visitors’ Center on 5 November 2005 to a group of foreign and U.S. dignitaries.

In December 2005 FARMS released a new version of its Web site. In response to feedback from people who have used the site over the last several years, the new FARMS site boasts additional content and enhanced features.

At 500 pages, the new FARMS Review (vol. 17, no. 2) nearly bursts its binding with items of interest for anyone desiring to be well-informed on Mormon studies. The coverage ranges from Lehi’s encampments in Arabia and the resurgence of the all-but-dead Spalding theory to Jewish-Mormon relations, creation ex nihilo, and the Egyptian Hor Book of Breathings.

On 23 February 2006 BYU professor Daniel C. Peterson and DNA scientist John M. Butler were interviewed on the Hugh Hewitt radio program concerning DNA and the Book of Mormon. One week earlier, the Los Angeles Times had run a front-page story on how human DNA studies contradict the Book of Mormon because they suggest an Asian ancestry for people native to the Americas; and on that same day the Times reporter, William Lobdell, was a guest on Hewitt’s program.

Near the end of the children of Israel’s journey to the promised land following their miraculous escape from Egypt, they once again began to complain against the Lord and against Moses. As a result of this sin, the Lord sent “fiery serpents” among them (Numbers 21:6). Faced with physical death, the people went to Moses, confessed their sins, and entreated him to pray to the Lord to take the serpents away. However, the serpents were not taken away as requested. Instead, in what may have seemed an expression of deep irony—but was in reality a sacred symbol—Moses was instructed to raise up a brass serpent as the means of healing those bitten. This Moses did: “And it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived. And the children of Israel set forward” (Numbers 21:9–10). There ends the story in the Bible account.

Each year at this time we remind graduate students about the Nibley Fellowship Program and its application deadline. Named in honor of the late eminent Latter-day Saint scholar Hugh Nibley, this program provides financial aid to students enrolled in accredited PhD programs in areas of study directly related to the work and mission of the Maxwell Institute, particularly work done under the name of FARMS—studies of the Book of Mormon, the Book of Abraham, the Old and New Testaments, early Christianity, ancient temples, and related subjects. Applicants cannot be employed at the Institute or be related to an Institute employee.

These are the best of times for Book of Mormon studies. Since 2001, FARMS (now part of the Maxwell Institute) has been publishing the long-anticipated findings of Professor Royal Skousen’s Book of Mormon Critical Text Project. Each massive volume in this landmark study, appearing on a yearly basis, averages nearly 670 oversize pages of research and analysis that reward careful examination with expanded views of the founding text of Mormonism.

Journey of Faith, a FARMS documentary about Lehi’s travels through ancient Arabia, has been well received and has generated considerable interest since its release last summer (see report in Insights25/3). Now steps are under way to produce a reissue of the DVD, this time with translations of the commentary into Spanish and Portuguese with English closed-captioning.

In his analysis of Mosiah 1:2–6 and 1 Nephi 1:1–4, John A. Tvedtnes notes that in many instances “Nephite writers relied on earlier records as they recorded their history.”1 He makes a convincing argument that the description of King Benjamin teaching his sons “in all the language of his fathers” (Mosiah 1:2) is modeled on Nephi’s account.