The Annotated Book of Mormon by Grant Hardy

Grant Hardy’s The Annotated Book of Mormon shares its literary DNA with four previous works. Hardy’s first take on a specialized Book of Mormon edition was The Book of Mormon: A Reader’s Edition, published by the University of Illinois Press in 2003.¹ It reformatted the text so that poetry was presented in poetic stanzas, and prose text appeared in paragraphs with the punctuation modernized (most ­notably by including quotation marks).² Section headings helped readers easily navigate literary units. Footnotes were used sparingly and identified dates, the source of quotations, narrative threads, and the locations of original chapter breaks.³ Appendices provided statements from Joseph Smith and other witnesses to the Book of Mormon, as well as charts, maps, background essays, and suggestions for further reading. One drawback of the ­Reader’s Edition was its use of the 1920 Book of Mormon text, which differs from the Church’s current edition in some 150 places but has the advantage of being in the public domain.

The deep engagement with the Book of Mormon required to create the Reader’s Edition led to Hardy’s Understanding the Book of Mormon: A Reader’s Guide, published by Oxford University Press in 2010.⁴ Like his first book, this volume addressed readers who do not share Hardy’s Latter-­day Saint faith in the Book of Mormon as inspired scripture, but Hardy made the case that the Book of Mormon is still worth their serious attention both as literature and as world scripture.⁵ Because Understanding the Book of Mormon is an academic publication addressed to a diverse audience, it is nondogmatic in its approach to historical questions (such as the existence of an actual Nephi) and explains how any given literary feature might be understood either by believers or nonbelievers.⁶

Hardy’s second publication of the full Book of Mormon text was The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ—Maxwell Institute Study Edition (MISE), published jointly in 2018 by BYU’s Religious Studies Center, BYU’s Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, and Deseret Book.⁷ The MISE is an updated Reader’s Edition—the headings, formatting, footnotes, and appendices are all improved. The original chapter breaks are moved from the footnotes to the body text, and the footnotes are expanded with additional literary and narrative observations as well as alternative readings from Book of Mormon prepublication manuscripts. Thanks to Church copyright permission, the 1920 text was replaced with the Church’s 2013 text, allowing the MISE to match the official version. But the most significant change from the Reader’s Edition is that the MISE is written for believing Latter-­day Saints, so its notes and appendices explicitly present a position of faith.⁸

The final work in The Annotated Book of Mormon’s ancestry is The New Oxford Annotated Bible, edited by Michael Coogan and published by Oxford University Press. The Annotated Bible (in its fifth edition as of 2018) is the flagship Bible in OUP’s study-­Bible line and includes denominational variations, such as The Catholic Study Bible and The Jewish Annotated New Testament. The Annotated Book of Mormon is also published by Oxford’s Bible division and is in fact the first non-­Bible in its history. Although The Annotated Book of Mormon is a refinement of the format Hardy has been perfecting since the Reader’s Edition, this new work also takes many of its visual and organizational cues from the Annotated Bible (as their similar titles are meant to suggest). These include introductions to each individual book, a series of essays in the appendix that examine the text from different angles, and a dense block of footnotes at the bottom of each page where the word or phrase under discussion is highlighted in italics.⁹

In sum, one may think of The Annotated Book of Mormon as a combination of all four previous works: it includes the user-­friendly format of the Reader’s Edition and the MISE, the interpretive insights and outward-­facing scholarship of Understanding the Book of Mormon, and the visual style and prestige of the Oxford study Bibles. Understanding the Book of Mormon remains an invaluable stand-­alone resource for its in-­depth analysis, but the Reader’s Edition is now effectually obsolete, having no benefits over this new successor. Unfortunately, The Annotated Book of Mormon could not secure the copyright agreement that allowed the MISE to use the Church’s 2013 text, so it reverts to the 1920 text used in the Reader’s Edition, leaving the MISE with that advantage. The MISE also remains unique with its Latter-­day Saint target audience.

A primary audience for The Annotated Book of Mormon is those outside the faith, especially those who are academically minded (that is, people who read the kinds of things published by Oxford). These readers may be willing to engage with the Book of Mormon, not necessarily because they are exploring conversion but at least because they are willing to learn more. Hardy identifies himself in the introduction as “a believer” and describes his role as “a host (I hope a gracious one) in inviting out­siders to see how the narrative operates, how it makes its points, and to gain some sense of the book’s message and why believers have found it so compelling” (x). Conscious of readers who do not accept Joseph Smith’s story of ancient American plates and angelic messengers, Hardy’s footnotes and essays will sometimes explain how a Book of Mormon passage was relevant in the nineteenth century, which is where these readers might assume the text originates, or will explain how the Book of Mormon could be seen as religious fiction. Because this is a primer on the Book of Mormon, not the Church, the annotations as a rule explain what the Book of Mormon says without exploring how a given idea may have developed among Latter-­day Saints since 1830.¹⁰

Some Latter-­day Saints may be uncomfortable with a Book of Mormon edition that is not designed for religious conversion. Given that the Book of Mormon self-­identifies as a missionary tool, an academic intent can seem like a betrayal of its purpose. However, I can appreciate the value of this approach when I consider the times I have been on the other side of the equation. For example, when I as a Christian want to enhance my understanding of Islam by reading a study edition of the Quran, my preference would be to read something edited by Muslims. I want them to explain the Quran and why they love it so much. At the same time, because I do not share their religious faith, I would appreciate them being honest about the Quran’s complexities and controversies. Were their work designed only to convert me, I honestly would not read it. And although I respect their view of the Quran’s inspiration, I would also want the Muslim editors to suggest how a nonbeliever such as myself might think about the Quran’s origin and nature. A volume such as HarperOne’s The Study Quran (2015) succeeds as a literary ambassador because it checks all these boxes and helps me feel comfortable learning about the Quran as a reader who is curious to learn but not interested in becoming a Muslim. The Annotated Book of Mormon fills this role for the Book of Mormon. While it does not expressly invite its readers to come to Jesus, it does allow curious readers to engage with our founding scripture in a serious yet nonpushy way. If this creates space for more people to read the Book of Mormon than would otherwise happen, then I consider that a win.

In addition, The Annotated Book of Mormon presents the world with a Book of Mormon that looks like it deserves serious engagement as a scriptural text. More than a century ago, Church editors worked hard to change the Book of Mormon’s originally novel-­like format so that it matched what readers expected scripture to look like in the King James Version (KJV). To that end, chapters were shortened, verse numbers were added, and new paragraphs began with each verse. While that may have been a savvy missionary-­minded move at the time, official Book of Mormon editions since then continue to emulate the KJV while ignoring the fact that the Bible moved on. Today, virtually all translations (including special editions of the KJV) arrange prose narrative into paragraphs and display poetry in poetic stanzas. Verse numbers are shrunk to superscripts to make them visually unobtrusive, and the chapter breaks (invented in the medieval era and often placed in intrusive locations) are deemphasized in favor of section headings marking natural literary divisions. These developments are universally adopted because this format makes the Bible far easier to read. (To anyone who doubts this, I challenge you to read anything other than scripture in a format where a new paragraph begins every sentence or half-­sentence and see if that doesn’t ruin the experience.) Furthermore, serious students of the Bible today are accustomed to engaging with the text in a study Bible format, where the bottom half of each page is packed with dense annotations reflecting a rich history of biblical interpretation.¹¹ Official editions of the Book of Mormon, by contrast, are still printed with verse-­centric paragraphing that obscures the natural contours of the narrative. The footnotes primarily consist of cross-­references or point to the Topical Guide. These references perform their intended function of signaling that the Book of Mormon is a companion to the Bible,¹² but their ability to help readers dive deep into the Book of Mormon’s meaning is limited, particularly since most of them point to other passages whose relationship to the starting passage is merely thematic. By contrast, The Annotated Book of Mormon reimagines the Book of Mormon in the format of a modern Bible translation like the NRSV, inviting outside readers to see the Book of Mormon in the way they expect biblical scripture to look. And since the notes elucidate the text in the manner of a study Bible, they communicate that this text has received, and continues to deserve, serious study. All of this aids The Annotated Book of Mormon in its role as an ambassador to readers outside the Latter-­day Saint faith.

Of course, this book will also find an audience among Latter-­day Saints. Given the academic publisher, I was initially concerned that Oxford would mandate a strictly secular editorial approach (“No angels or gold plates allowed here!”). I was therefore pleased to find that Hardy was permitted to take the stance of a believer: “I believe the Book of Mormon is [a] gift from God, a revealed translation of a record written by ancient American prophets” (xi). Instead of taking some posture of objectivity, Hardy says that he has not “adopted a disinterested, neutral stance” and admits that while attempting to treat the complex issues honestly, he has also consciously “emphasized the book’s strengths” (x). Because of this framing, the annotations on each page adopt the perspective of the Book of Mormon’s own internal point of view (“Nephi sees . . .”) rather than create some way to distance the text from reality (“Joseph Smith claimed that Nephi saw . . .”). Outsiders are welcome to interpret this perspective through a literary lens (“Within the narrative, the character of Nephi sees . . .”), but the notes will feel most natural to believers who are accustomed to thinking of Book of Mormon authors as real people. On the occasions where the notes do present a nineteenth-­century connection for the benefit of readers outside the faith, Latter-­day Saint readers can interpret these data in alternative ways, such as assuming that ancient prophets wrote under inspiration in a way that made the book relevant during the time of its future translation.

While the book introductions, annotations, and essays are written to welcome first-­time readers outside the faith, this does not mean they are simplistic.¹³ Hardy is one of our most important Book of Mormon scholars, and even the most experienced Book of Mormon readers will learn much from this edition. That being said, I anticipate that invested students of the Book of Mormon will not agree with every annotation or editorial decision. In a volume of 892 pages and thousands of notes, some annotations will inevitably miss an important insight or make an observation that the reader finds flawed. Also worth observing is the book’s univocality, with Hardy functioning as the only named editor and as the only named author of the annotations and essays. Were this edition written by another individual, or were it produced by a team of scholars (which is standard in Oxford’s other scripture editions), the book would undoubtedly read very differently. Still, whatever limitations are inherent to a one-­man project of such an audacious scope, the quality of the final product is truly remarkable. I could quibble about notes I would have written differently, but overall, I have difficulty imagining a better edition to serve as the Book of Mormon’s ambassador to the scholarly world.

No one edition of the Book of Mormon can serve the needs of all people. For our family scripture study, I will still pass out copies of the MISE to my kids. For those who want interactive videos, reading schedules, and links to online content, an app like ScripturePlus will still be their first choice. For sharing copies of the Book of Mormon in bulk, nothing beats the Church’s inexpensive missionary edition. But for those who want to dive deep and appreciate the Book of Mormon’s literary complexity and doctrinal richness in new ways, I heartily recommend this book.