Joseph Smith Papers Project to Publish Book of Mormon Manuscripts

For twenty-five years Professor Royal Skousen has been working on the Book of Mormon Critical Text Project. To date, he has published nine volumes, at first under the auspices of FARMS, and presently through the Laura F. Willes Center for Book of Mormon Studies (part of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship).

Now, as part of the Joseph Smith Papers Project of the Church History Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a facsimile edition of the printer’s manuscript of the Book of Mormon will be produced with Royal Skousen and Robin Scott Jensen as editors. This edition will combine Professor Skousen’s previously produced transcriptions of the printer’s manuscript with newly available photographs of the manuscript.

The announcement follows:

It is anticipated that the manuscript, which was used to set the majority of type for the first edition of the Book of Mormon, will be published in the future as the third volume of the project’s Revelations and Translations series. The volume will be a facsimile edition, featuring a photographic image of each page of the manuscript arranged in a parallel format with a transcript of that page.

The editors of the volume are Royal Skousen, professor of linguistics and English language at Brigham Young University, and Robin Scott Jensen, a historian with the Church History Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Skousen and Jensen will work together to apply the project’s stylistic conventions to the transcript of the printer’s manuscript earlier published by Skousen as part of his Book of Mormon Critical Text Project.

Community of Christ officials have also generously permitted high-resolution photographs of the manuscript to be taken by Welden C. Andersen, a photographer with the Publication Services Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Andersen’s photographs, taken in fall 2012, will be included in the volume.

Management and staff of the Church History Department and the Joseph Smith Papers Project are deeply grateful for the collaboration of Community of Christ officials, Professor Skousen, and Brigham Young University administrators on this significant project.

After the printer’s manuscript is published, Skousen will work with Jensen and other project editors to prepare and publish a facsimile edition, with photographs and transcripts, of the surviving portions of the original manuscript of the Book of Mormon.