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BYU Studies Quarterly

BYU Studies Quarterly

Abstract

On July 11, 2013, I was surprised to get an email from a Community of Christ colleague informing me that the Smith-Pettit Foundation was publishing John S. Dinger's Significant Textual Changes in the Book of Mormon: The First Printed Edition Compared to the Manuscripts and to the Subsequent Major LDS English Printed Editions and that there was to be a book signing on July 18, 2013, at Benchmark Books in Salt Lake City. This was the first I had heard of this endeavor. The reference to the manuscripts piqued my attention, since I knew that neither manuscript was readily available, although fully readable microfilm-based photographs of the printer's manuscript were, but that was not the case for the original manuscript. The only readily available source for the original manuscript would be volume 1 of the critical text, the typographical facsimile of the original manuscript, edited by me and published in 2001 by the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS). And the most convenient source for the printer's manuscript would be volume 2, the typographical facsimile of the printer's manuscript, published at the same time. Complete photographs of the two manuscripts, published as part of the Joseph Smith Papers, will not appear until at least 2015 (and probably later for the original manuscript).

I suspected that Dinger's work would be derivative of my own, but I could find no mention in the prepublication information provided by Smith-Pettit or Benchmark Books on how this critical text had been constructed. No advance copy or information was sent to me about this work. I had never had any communication from Dinger, and the first thing I learned about the actual sources for this book came when I was asked by BYU Studies to review the book and received a copy of it on August 15, 2013.

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