A Cultural History of the Book of Mormon: Volume One

This first volume of a cultural history of the Book of Mormon focuses on the earliest years of the text. In a new reading of Mormon history informed by the author's expertise in anthropology and text analysis, the role of Restorationists in locating the Book of Mormon inside the cultural world of the Bible comes to the forefront. The notion of "metatext" is developed in order to explain how texts about the Book of Mormon informed the earliest readings of it, rendering it "scripture" in...
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This first volume of a cultural history of the Book of Mormon focuses on the earliest years of the text. In a new reading of Mormon history informed by the author's expertise in anthropology and text analysis, the role of Restorationists in locating the Book of Mormon inside the cultural world of the Bible comes to the forefront. The notion of "metatext" is developed in order to explain how texts about the Book of Mormon informed the earliest readings of it, rendering it "scripture" in the genre familiar to Christians, and also shaped it to fit the tradition of Restoration widespread on the American frontier. As a group of Campbellites in late 1830 saw in the book their hoped-for restoration of the power of miracles, the Book of Mormon became the engine of a movement: the power had been restored. In this movement, Alexander Campbell's Ohio group suffered a schism, and his remaining followers called the break off sect "Mormonites" in derision. This cultural history of the Book of Mormon presents a dramatically new way to understand that text and how it has been read and misread from the 1830s onward, as Restorationists took up the text--not for what it said--as a sign of miracles being restored to the true New Testament Church. This first volume is the sort of book you'll either love or hate.