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In this episode of Hebrew Voices #203, Revelation or Imagination: Part 1, Nehemia interviews the top scholar in the world on the Book of Mormon. Although the original manuscripts of the Bible have been lost, the original manuscripts of the Book of Mormon have survived and provide fascinating analogies that highlight the similarities and profound differences.

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Nehemia: This is amazing to me, because here we’re doing something I wish I could do with the Book of Exodus, which is… see, is this the handwriting of Joshua, and here’s the handwriting of Moses? And I don’t have that opportunity. And here we… it’s amazing that we can do this in the original manuscript.

Royal: Yeah, and it does turn out to be very important for this, this issue of easier and difficult readings, which we talked about.

Nehemia: Shalom, and welcome to Hebrew Voices. I’m here today with Royal Skousen. He’s the editor of the Critical Text Project of the Book of Mormon. He taught in universities for 50 years; 41 years at BYU, Brigham Young University, nine years at a variety of other universities including Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, Texas-Austin, California-San Diego, and a University in Finland I won’t attempt to pronounce the name of.

Before we get started, Royal, I want to try to convince my audience to listen. So, we’re going to talk today about textual criticism of the Book of Mormon, and the reason this should be important to my audience, to everybody who’s listening here, is that what I deal with is textual criticism of the Tanakh, of the Old Testament, and also of the New Testament. For textual criticism to be valid, there’s sort of this assumption that it should apply to any text. And here, we’re going to take an example that we don’t have in the Tanakh, or in the New Testament, where, with the Book of Mormon, we have literally the original manuscript, in English. And then we have a copy of the original manuscript called the Printer’s Manuscript, and then we have two editions that were made under Joseph Smith’s supervision, the 1830 and the 1837. And what Royal has done…

Royal: And 1842.

Nehemia: And the 1842; so we have three. So, we have an opportunity to do something we couldn’t even dream of with the Book of Exodus, with Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, which is to compare the original manuscript with a second manuscript, which was a copy, and then other editions, in this case printed editions, that were made under the supervision of, at least what I would say was the author, Joseph Smith Jr.

So, with that said, Royal, thank you for coming and joining me on this program. I’m so excited. And one last thing in this pitch; guys, just so you understand who we’re dealing with here, this is the Emanuel Tov of the Book of Mormon. I mean, I don’t think that’s an exaggerat… No, really. I mean, you’re the guy. So, the fact that you’re joining me on my program, I’m really honored. I did have Emanuel Tov on the program as well.

All right. So, let’s give the audience a little bit of a background, though, because I don’t know that everybody in my audience understands what the Book of Mormon is, and more specifically, how it was produced in 1828 and 1829 in manuscript form.

Royal: Well, I think it’s… basically, you can say it’s a religious history of some peoples that came from Jerusalem about 600 BC. And under the leadership of a man named Lehi, they broke into two opposing groups, named after two of the sons. One is called the Nephites, after Nephi, the other the Lamanites, after Laman. And the book basically describes religious aspects of the Nephites, plus the wars that went on between the Lamanites and the Nephites.

The Lamanites are cursed with a dark skin because of their evilness, and they ultimately end up conquering and destroying the Nephites at the end of the book, about 400 AD. So, we have about a thousand-year history here in the text, and I think it’s… there is some debate about the general Mormon interpretation that the American Indians, at least some of them, derive from the Lamanites, the darker-skinned people. So, it’s a very interesting history because Joseph Smith says that he received some gold plates from an angel, and his job was to translate a good portion of these plates. His translation, though, is not like what we would think of as a translation, which would be that you have this text here and you’re going to convert it into English, say. Instead, he received, it looks like, a revealed version of the translation, that it isn’t actually his translation. That it’s coming from the Lord is the way I would put it. He had a stone, which he used, the seer stone, and…

Nehemia: I have a picture of that, that I’m going to put that up there. And just for the audience to understand. So, I’m Jewish. I’m not a Mormon, but you are a believing Mormon, and part of what you’re presenting here… and in a sense, can I say you wear tw