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Mormons who have more questions about LDS Church origins and the Utah-based faith's sacred scripture soon will have a chance to hear from historians immersed in the church's efforts to understand and explain such topics.
On Aug. 20, the LDS Church History Library and the Church Historian's Press will host a free lecture titled "The Book of Mormon Manuscripts: Insights from the Editors of The Joseph Smith Papers." It will be held at 7 p.m. in the Assembly Hall on downtown Salt Lake City's Temple Square.
Speakers will include Royal Skousen, professor of linguistics at Brigham Young University, who made a painstaking study of the various editions of the narrative as editor of the "Book of Mormon Critical Text Project."
He will be joined by Robin Scott Jensen, associate managing historian and project archivist for the Joseph Smith Papers Project.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints recently published for the first time a copy of the Book of Mormon's "printer's manuscript," a copy of the original manuscript that was used, according to a release, "by the compositors and printers at E. B. Grandin's Palmyra, New York, print shop to set type for the first edition of the Book of Mormon."
The Community of Christ, formerly known as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, has owned the printer's manuscript, but in the past few years has collaborated with the larger LDS Church in Salt Lake City, the release said, "in a historic effort to make the full text of the printer's manuscript available."
The result of their joint efforts can be seen in the latest Joseph Smith Papers publication — "Revelations and Translations, Volume 3, Parts 1 and 2: Printer's Manuscript of the Book of Mormon."
Peggy Fletcher Stack