The Annotated Book of Mormon Edited by Grant Hardy

Authors

Joshua M. Sears

Keywords

Book Review, Annotated Book of Mormon

Abstract

Grant Hardy’s The Annotated Book of Mormon shares its literary DNA with four previous works. Hardy’s first take on a specialized Book of Mormon edition was The Book of Mormon: A Reader’s Edition, published by the University of Illinois Press in 2003. It reformatted the text so that poetry was presented in poetic stanzas, and prose text appeared in paragraphs with the punctuation modernized (most notably by including quotation marks). Section headings helped readers easily navigate literary units. Footnotes were used sparingly and identified dates, the source of quotations, narrative threads, and the locations of original chapter breaks. Appendices provided statements from Joseph Smith and other witnesses to the Book of Mormon, as well as charts, maps, background essays, and suggestions for further reading. One drawback of the Reader’s Edition was its use of the 1920 Book of Mormon text, which differs from the Church's current edition in some 150 places but has the advantage of being in the public domain.

Recommended Citation

Sears, Joshua M. (2023) "The Annotated Book of Mormon Edited by Grant Hardy," BYU Studies Quarterly: Vol. 62: Iss. 4, Article 14.
Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/byusq/vol62/iss4/14