In his back and forth with William J. Hamblin, Phillip Jenkins has flat out denied that there is any legitimate study of the Book of Mormon as an ancient text. Why? Because, he says, such work is never published in mainstream journals, academic (non-Mormon) presses, or presented at professional (non-Mormon) conferences. And, to boot, non-LDS scholars largely ignore it.

It is therefore for his benefit that I provide the following bibliography. It includes:

(1) works by LDS authors on the Book of Mormon published or presented in non-LDS venues;
(2) works by non-LDS authors on the Book of Mormon published or presented in non-LDS venues; and
(3) works by non-LDS authors on the Book of Mormon published or presented in LDS venues. Note that the onlymaterial included here published by an LDS press or journal will be material from non-LDS scholars.

I stress that the criteria is not agreement with the LDS position on the Book of Mormon, but engagement with it. The non-Mormon scholars may not agree that the Book of Mormon is ancient, but their willingness to engage the idea—and the LDS scholarship on the topic—certainly suggest that there is or at least can be legitimate study of the Book of Mormon as ancient, and most of these non-LDS scholars were impressed by LDS scholarship on the matter.

Some of these works are not directly on the antiquity of the Book of Mormon or even the Book of Mormon at all, such as the biographies of Joseph Smith by Richard Bushman, but nonetheless include engagement with (and even defenses of) ancient Book of Mormon studies.

As a final caveat, I note that this is not comprehensive. This merely represents what I was able to dig up in a fairly short time (aided, I must confess, by a brainstorming session with my friend Stephen Smoot). Still this should be enough to illustrate that ancient Book of Mormon studies is something that has been, published on and engaged with by both LDS and non-LDS in mainstream academia.

***

Barker, Margaret, “Joseph Smith and Preexilic Israelite Religion,” in The Worlds of Joseph Smith: A Bicentennial Conference at the Library of Congress, ed. John W. Welch (Provo, Utah: BYU Press, 2006), 69–82.

Barker, Margaret and Kevin Christensen, "Seeking the Face of the Lord: Joseph Smith and the First Temple Tradition," in Joseph Smith Jr.: Reappraisals after Two Centuries (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 143-172.

Bushman, Richard Lyman, Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois, 1984).

Bushman, Richard Lyman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Knopf, 2005; paperback, Vintage, 2007).

Charlesworth, James H., “Messianism in the Pseudepigrapha and the Book of Mormon,” in Reflections on Mormonism: Juedaeo-Christian Parallels, ed. Truman G. Madsen (Provo, Utah: BYU Religious Studies Center, 1978), 99–137.

Givens, Terryl L., By the Hand of Mormon: The American Scripture that Launched a New World Religion(New York: Oxford University Press, 2002).

Givens, Terryl L., “‘Common-Sense’ Meets the Book of Mormon: Source, Substance, and Prophetic Disruption,” in Revisiting Thomas O’Dea’s The Mormons: Contemporary Perspectives, ed. Cardell K. Jacobson, John P. Hoffman, and Tim B. Heaton (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2008), 79–98.

Givens, Terryl L., The Book of Mormon: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).

Gutjahr, Paul C., The Book of Mormon: A Biography (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2012).

Hardy, Grant, ed., The Book of Mormon: A Reader’s Edition (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2003).

Hardy, Grant, Understanding the Book of Mormon: A Reader’s Guide (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).

Lundquist, John M., “Appendix: Biblical Seafaring and the Book of Mormon,” in Raphael Patai, The Children of Noah: Jewish Seafaring in Ancient Times (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), 171–175.

Nibley, Hugh, “The Mormon View of the Book of Mormon,” Concilium: An International Review of Theology 10 (December 1967): 82–83; reprinted in Concilium: Theology in the Age of Renewal 30 (1968): 170–73.

Owen, Paul, “Theological Apostasy and the Role of Canonical Scripture: A Thematic Analysis of 1 Nephi 13–14,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 23 (2014): 81–100.

Reynolds, Noel B., “The Gospel According to Mormon,” Scottish Journal of Theology 68/2 (2015): 218–234.

Schaalje, G. Brice, Paul J. Fields, Matthew Roper, and Gregory L. Snow, “Extended Nearest Shrunken Centroid Classification: a New Method for Open-Set Authorship Attribution of texts of Varying Sizes,” Literary and Linguistic Computing 26/1 (2011): 71–88.

Skousen, Royal, ed., The Book of Mormon: The Earliest Text (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2009).

Sorenson, John L., “Book of Mormon,” in Encyclopedia USA: The Encyclopedia of the United States of America, Past and Present, 50 vols. (total planned), ed. Donald W. Whisenhunt (Gulf Breeze, Florida: Academic International Press, 1983–), in volume 7 (1986).

Stendahl, Krister, “The Sermon on the Mount and Third Nephi,” in Reflections on Mormonism: Juedaeo-Christian Parallels, ed. Truman G. Madsen (Provo, Utah: BYU Religious Studies Center, 1978), 139–154.

Tvedtnes, John A., “Hebrew Names in the Book of Mormon,” paper presented at the 13th Annual World Congress of Jewish Studies, Jerusalem, August 2001.

Tvedtnes, John A., “Hebraisms in the Book of Mormon,” in Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics, 4 vols., ed. Geoffrey Khan (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2013), 195–196.

Tvedtnes, John A., “Names of People: Book of Mormon,” in Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics, 4 vols., ed. Geoffrey Khan (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2013), 787–788.

Welch, John W., “Chiasmus in the Book of Mormon,” in Chiasmus in Antiquity: Structures, Analyses, Exegesis, ed. John W. Welch (Hildesheim: Gerstenberg Verlag, 1981; reprint Provo, Utah: Research Press, 1999), 198–210.


Welch, John W., “Narrating Homicide in the Hebrew Bible and the Book of Mormon,” 2014 Jewish Law Association Conference, July 15, 2014.

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