Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, 2nd Edition

Skousen, Royal. Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon, 2nd Edition In The Book of Mormon Critical Text Project., 2017.

This six-book set, entitled Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon (ATV), fulfills the central task of the critical text project, to restore the original text of the Book of Mormon to the extent possible using scholarly means. In the six books of ATV, Skousen discusses every substantive change to words or phrases in the text as well as changes in the spelling for about a dozen Book of Mormon names. ATV also includes a brief discussion of every type of grammatical change that the text has undergone over the years. (A complete discussion that lists every individual grammatical change was published last year in the two-volume set Grammatical Variation, also available from BYU Studies.)

The changes in the second edition (ATV2) include:

  • 37 new write-ups (34 of these involve suggested changes to the text, nearly all of which have come from independent readers).
  • 8 additional substantive changes to the Book of Mormon text, besides the 606 substantive changes first published in 2009 by Yale University Press in The Book of Mormon: The Earliest Text.
  • 60 earlier write-ups in ATV1 now thoroughly revised for ATV2.
  • 101 addenda items in ATV1 now in their appropriate place in ATV2, so that everything reads correctly in a single sequence (there is no longer a need to consult any addenda for later corrections or revisions to previous analyses).