Giving the Book of Ether its Proper Due - a podcast by PDF feed of Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship

Review of Daniel L. Belnap, ed., Illuminating the Jaredite Records (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University / Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2020). 320 pages. Hardback, $27.95.

Abstract: Illuminating the Jaredite Record collects ten papers by different Book of Mormon scholars. This is the second publication from the Book of Mormon Academy at Brigham Young University, a collection of scholars interested in the Book of Mormon. As with the first volume, the authors approach the text from different perspectives and thereby illuminate different aspects of the text.





In his introduction to this collection of essays, Daniel Belnap notes that the Book of Mormon Academy, “established in 2013 at Brigham Young University, [was a] consortium of Religious Education faculty … created to foster critical thinking about the Book of Mormon and to make their academic, theological, and pedagogical research available to the wider public” (v). The current volume, the second from the Book of Mormon Academy,1 follows the general conceptual structure of the first, where essays are grouped according to the perspectives the various authors used while approaching this text.

This is an important formula because it reminds the reader of the breadth and depth with which the Book of Mormon deserves to be studied and understood. In particular, however, I must point out that the subject matter of this volume is just as important as the scope of the essays. Although [Page 54]Ether forms a critical subtheme to Mormon’s apologetic explanation of the Nephite demise, it is less often the subject of study. Frank F. Judd Jr. notes at the beginning of his chapter, “Resources for the study of the book of Ether are relatively few in number, especially when compared with resources for the study of the rest of the Book of Mormon” (157). This volume’s multifaceted approach is extremely welcomed and needed.

In the interests of full disclosure, I was a prepublication reviewer for the volume. I liked it then and I like it now. Now, however, I can give appropriate credit to the authors in ways in which they were previously concealed from me. This means I can finally begin to incorporate these various insights into my own understanding of the Book of Mormon and make sure that appropriate credit is given to these excellent scholars.

Illuminating the Jaredite Records is broken into four topical sections: 1) Cultural-Historical Lenses: Identity and Praxis in the Jaredite Record; 2) Narratological Lenses: Moroni and the Jaredite Record; 3) Reception-Historical Lenses: Women and the Jaredite Record in Antiquity and Modernity; and 4) Pedagogical Lenses: Teaching the Jaredite Record. I comment on each chapter in each part of the volume.

Cultural-Historical Lenses: Identity and Praxis in the Jaredite Record

“‘They are of Ancient Date’: Jaredite Traditions and the Politics of Gadianton’s Dissent” (Daniel L. Belnap). I asserted earlier that the Jaredite record played an important role in Mormon’s apologetic for the Nephite demise. Belnap’s article is an important explanation of one of the locations of that influence. It might seem unusual that the lead article in a volume about the Book of Ether concentrates on the Gadianton robbers, who are exclusively part of Mormon’s text. Belnap understands that the Jaredite secret combinations are simply the earlier embodiment of the same secret combinations from his day. Thus one of the tasks of the article is to establish how the Gadianton pre...

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