Description
Over the course of his career, Brant A. Gardner has continually refined how we read and understand the Book of Mormon. Bringing together and updating some of his classic articles and presentations from over the past twenty-five years, this volume demonstrates his methodical approach to the scripture. Addressing topics from the social history of the early Nephites to the cognitive realities of Joseph Smith’s translation process, this collection avoids easy answers and overstatement. Instead, it offers a rigorous, text-first exploration for readers looking to deepen their understanding of the Book of Mormon’s ancient setting and modern emergence.
Order on Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GX3131LX
A one-page sell sheet advertising this book and providing fulfillment instructions for libraries and vendors can be found here.
Reviews and Featured Articles
“Beyond the Sandy Foundation”: A Conversation with Brant A. Gardner on Book of Mormon Authenticity by Jared Riddick – FAIR Blog about this book with the author over on the FAIR Blog.
Praise for The Record and the Reading
“Brant Gardner has been a major figure in Book of Mormon studies for the last two decades, and this volume demonstrates why. These essays show Gardner at his best, a close reader who again and again mines the Book of Mormon text and excavates profound insight after profound insight. Readers who spend time with this volume will come away with a deeper sense of the world behind the Book of Mormon, a world inhabited by actual Nephites and Lamanites whose stories and experiences Gardner consistently brings to light. Through exploring the contexts (both ancient and modern) of this penetrating record, Gardner ultimately provides his witness to the authenticity of the Book of Mormon.”
Nick Frederick – Professor of Ancient Scripture, Brigham Young University
“By the time Terryl Givens published his By the Hand of Mormon in 2003, the project of studying the Book of Mormon primarily in conversation with the ancient near east had slowed significantly. In 2010, Grant Hardy’s Understanding the Book of Mormon announced an era of Book of Mormon research that has proven to be especially focused on literary analysis and theological interpretation. The man who carried the torch for Book of Mormon Studies between these two eras was Brant Gardner. With one eye looking backward to the best of historicizing study, and with the other looking forward to literary analysis of the Book of Mormon’s shape, Gardner built the bridge between the twentieth and twenty-first centuries of Book of Mormon research. Readers of this wonderful collection of Gardner’s ‘greatest hits’ will walk the length of that bridge and take in some remarkable views.”
Joseph M. Spencer, Associate Professor of Ancient Scripture at Brigham Young University
