Reexploring the Book of Mormon

The Book of Mormon invites exploration and reexploration. After more than 150 years of careful reading, we are still learning to appreciate its fullness, understand its origins, and comprehend its messages.

Reexploring the Book of Mormon yields a wealth of new insights. More than ever before, patient and skillful research during the past decade has led from one discovery to another.

Since 1981, the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (F.A.R.M.S.) has issued articles and updates—brief, readable reports on current discoveries about the origins and contents of the Book of Mormon. Eighty-five of these findings published through 1991 have been collected in this volume.

Topics include:

• How long it took Joseph Smith to translate the plates.
• What did Charles Anthon really say?
• Temples, kingship, and coronation among the Nephites.
• The seasonality of Nephite warfare.
• Poetic forms in the Book of Mormon.
• Prophetic symbolism in Nephite writings.
• The horse, silk, and linen in ancient America.
• Near Eastern origins of the names Nahom and Mulek.
• The persistence of Israelite laws in Nephite culture.
• Classic ancient forms in King Benjamin's speech.
• The use of cement in Mesoamerica and in Helaman 3.
• The spiritual desires that motivated Columbus.
• The covenant setting of Jesus' visit in 3 Nephi 11—18.
• Our Nephite sacrament prayers.

This type of research does more than gather circumstantial evidence for the Book of Mormon. It explores many avenues of the record's internal complexity. It helps define the rich literary, anthropological, historical, and spiritual settings in which this scripture was written and translated.