Thomas believes in the past few years, "non-Mormons have become better interpreters of the text than Mormons. Sometimes we're too literal and earnest about it."

Tickle said the discussion "shifts some of the emphasis away from the Book of Mormon just as a sacred text and opens up the possibility of it being fine literature."

The book is not only sacred to some 12 million people worldwide, but she sees it as "literarily and aesthetically important, and certainly culturally important. It's probably the best single window in terms of sacred literature of the American religious sensibility in the 19th century," when a potpourri of new religious movements were brewing in New England.

From that perspective, "it's the clearest, most accessible explication or example of what that upheaval was all about. If you want to take it as just sacred literature, you can. Or if you want to see it sociologically as an expression of where Americans were 150 years ago, you can do that as well. It becomes an invaluable scholarly tool."

"New" scripture that is unfamiliar to the majority always goes through a process of public scrutiny, she said. "Americans are just now getting to the notion that the Koran might be holy writ — at least some fairly respectable people see it that way, that something in there is universally true."

She believes the same may be said at some point about the Book of Mormon. "I'm hearing that more now in urban settings and lectures — they will put it in the same sentence with the Bhagavad Gita or other (religious) literature."

As Mormonism continues to gain members, prominent Latter-day Saints have also prompted interest in a cultural conversation about the book, she said.

"There's a tipping point — and that is not just the number (of Latter-day Saints). It is things like an Orrin Hatch, people like Marriott, who puts a Book of Mormon in every hotel bedroom, right next to the Gideon bible. After a few million of us spend a few million nights in Marriotts with that book in the drawer, some of us begin to read."

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E-mail: carrie@desnews.com