Mark Twain once derided the Book of Mormon as "chloroform in print." Long and complicated, written in the language of the King James version of the Bible, it boggles the minds of many. Yet it is unquestionably one of the most influential books ever written. With over 140 million copies in print, it is a central text of one of the largest and fastest-growing faiths in the world. And, Grant Hardy shows, it's far from the coma-inducing doorstop caricatured by Twain. In Understanding the Book of Mormon, Hardy offers the first comprehensive analysis of the work's narrative structure in its 180 year history. Unlike virtually all other recent world scriptures, the Book of Mormon presents itself as an integrated narrative rather than a series of doctrinal expositions, moral injunctions, or devotional hymns. Hardy takes readers through its characters, events, and ideas, as he explores the story and its messages. He identifies the book's literary techniques, such as characterization, embedded documents, allusions, and parallel narratives. Whether Joseph Smith is regarded as author or translator, it's noteworthy that he never speaks in his own voice; rather, he mediates nearly everything through the narrators Nephi, Mormon, and Moroni. Hardy shows how each has a distinctive voice, and all are woven into an integral whole. As with any scripture, the contending views of the Book of Mormon can seem irreconcilable. For believers, it is an actual historical document, transmitted from ancient America. For nonbelievers, it is the work of a nineteenth-century farmer from upstate New York. Hardy transcends this intractable conflict by offering a literary approach, one appropriate to both history and fiction. Regardless of whether readers are interested in American history, literature, comparative religion, or even salvation, he writes, the book can best be read if we examine the text on its own terms.

This volume elucidates both the diverse texts of the New Testament as well as the larger Jewish, Greek, and Roman worlds in which they were produced. It contains sections with various papers on the "Jewish Background of the New Testament," "Greco-Roman Background of the New Testament," "Jesus and the Gospels," "The Apostle Paul," "Hebrews, the Catholic Epistles, and Revelation," "New Testament Issues and Contexts," "The Text of the New Testament," and "After the New Testament." The volume therefore ranges from the law of Moses and intertestamental period to the First Jewish Revolt of AD 66-73 and the canonization of the New Testament.

Chronicles the history of the Mormon religion in America from its organization in 1830 to its recent trend toward worldwide expansion. Includes information on practices, settlements, historic sites, and principle leaders.

Brigham Young was a rough-hewn New York craftsman whose impoverished life was electrified by the Mormon faith. Turner provides a fully realized portrait of this spiritual prophet, viewed by followers as a protector and by opponents as a heretic. His pioneering faith made a deep imprint on tens of thousands of lives in the American Mountain West.

"Nineteenth-century Latter-day Saints looked forward to apocalyptic events that would unseat corrupt governments across the globe but would particularly decimate the tyrannical government of the United States. Mormons turned to prophecies of divine deliverance by way of plagues, natural disasters, foreign invasions, American Indian raids, slave uprisings, or civil war unleashed on American cities and American people ... Blythe examines apocalypticism across the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints particularly as it would take shape in localized and personalized forms in the writings and visions of ordinary Latter-day Saints outside of the Church's leadership"--