Rating: 
Summary: Excellent
Review: The Book of Mormon is a curious work. Jos. Smith, Jr., founder of the Mormon movement (whose largest branch is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Utah), claimed to receive it by divine revelation. It professes to be the history of ancient inhabitants of the Americas, who came to the New World centuries before Christ.Upon first blush, the Book of Mormon seems to be little more than a pale imitation of the Bible written in exaggerated King James English (by the time your done with it, you won't want to hear the phrase "and it came to pass" again). Nonetheless, the book is quite complicated and appears unlikely to be the work of the generally unlettered Jos. Smith. What is most interesting about the Book is its complex nature. Opponents of the Book have had a hard time finding internal inconsistencies in it, although it has a fair number of anachronisms. Although the LDS Church has produced competent apologists (such as the brilliant B.H. Roberts), the age of modern Mormons apologetics began with Hugh Nibley and has continued to the present with scholars associated with FARMS, now part of BYU. For example, while Jos. Smith believed that the events narrated in the Book of Mormon concerned the territory covered by North and South America, contemporary Mormon scholarship asserts that its events took place in a relatively small area of Central America. There is no archaeological evidence to support the authenticity of the Book, but it does appear to have numerous parallels to ancient Middle Eastern works. Prof. Givens, who is professor of English at the University of Richmond, has written a comprehensive book about the Book of Mormon. It isn't a commentary on the Book of Mormon, but a background work on the role of the Book of Mormon in the Latter-day Saints Church, its authorship, and the controversy about it "revelatory significance" (i.e., whether or not it's inspired). It's fairly dense, but it I'm not aware of a work that provides such useful background information to anyone who wants to study the Book of Mormon or who has some familiarity with it.
Rating:
Summary: Who Says Mormons Don't Get No Respect?
Review: There are three things which impressed me the most about this book: 1) Its contents. It's well-organized and comprehensive, going over arguments both pro and con for the historicity of the Book of Mormon, and addressing them all; 2) Its open-mindedness. Givens does not hide the fact that he has a bias in favour of the Book of Mormon, but in spite of this manages to remain neutral, even disinterested; and 3) The fact that Oxford University Press picked it for publication says a lot about the level of scholarship of the book. In fact, I believe this is the first time a non-LDS press has picked a book of this nature for publication -- and such a prestigious press at that.
Rating:
Summary: Like A Good Lawyer's Appellate Brief
Review: This is an extraordinary book. I've been a serious student of Mormonism for thirty years and this is the best book published in a decade. Givens writes eloquently and thoughtfully based upon exhaustive research. There are no tirades against those with whom he disagrees and no substitute of analysis with insult or flippancy. To me, Givens' book reads like a good lawyer's appellate brief in that he (1) states the facts (as Smith and the Book of Mormon assert); (2) fairly marshals the critics' evidence and argument against the asserted facts; and (3) analytically exposes much of the critics' arguments as superficial and/or logically flawed. Givens' self-styled purpose is to answer scholar Jan Shipps' question: How could any intelligent person ever believe the tale of an unsophisticated farm boy who found some engraved plates and used magic spectacles to translate them? Givens at 4. While not dispositive, Givens' analysis is at the very least thought provoking. For instance, are the Book of Mormon's replete quotations from Isaiah evidence of plagiarism or authenticity? If the former, how does one explain that the Book of Mormon Isaiah variants from the KJV more closely track the Septuagint and other sources from Qumran unavailable to Smith? Givens' discussion of the atonement is also fascinating. The usual creditor/debtor analogy makes some sense to me in a civil law context, but, as Givens opines, "No terrestrial magistrate would allow an innocent person to die for a guilty one and consider justice to be served." Givens at 205. Givens explains that "the Book of Mormon develops a doctrine for the atonement in such a way as to reclaim the principle of justice from a kind of Platonic abstraction . . . and to situate it in the context of human agency." I find Givens' analysis persuasive. Finally, I agree with Mr. Midgley that Givens' chapter on "Dialogic Revelation" is an elucidating analysis of what Mormons deem unique on the subject and why intelligent people could believe Smith's tale. The overall impression, whether one ultimately shares Givens' views or not, is that the disparity of conclusions among people of good will and intelligence suggests the issues are not simple.
| 
