Defending the Faith: Top Book of Mormon expert Royal Skousen to lecture

At Alma 43:13-14, careful textual research eliminates a potential problem regarding population: According to the current printed text, the “descendants” of the priests of Noah were, somewhat improbably, “as numerous nearly as were the Nephites” altogether. However, in the original manuscript, Oliver Cowdery wrote “desenters,” which became “descendants” but should almost certainly read “dissenters.” In other words, by themselves the offspring of the priests of Noah didn’t almost equal the numbers of the Nephites. But their alliance with the Amlicites and the Zoramites did.

Intriguingly, too, Skousen (a specialist, be it remembered, in linguistics and the English language) contends that the language of the Book of Mormon isn’t Joseph Smith’s early 19th-century dialect, but English of the 1500s and 1600s. Indeed, certain elements of Book of Mormon vocabulary may derive from a period prior to the King James Bible — which is certainly something to ponder.

Sponsored by the Laura F. Willes Center for Book of Mormon Studies and the Harold B. Lee Library, the lectures will be held at 7 p.m. in the Gordon B. Hinckley Center on the BYU campus.

Daniel C. Peterson is a professor of Islamic studies and Arabic at BYU, where he also serves as editor in chief of the Middle Eastern Texts Initiative. He is the founder of MormonScholarsTestify.org, the general editor of “Interpreter."