Seeking Miracles: The Book of Mormon; The Earliest Text
I just bought a copy of The Book of Mormon, The Earliest Text–even though I have trouble understanding the 16th century (Elizabethan, Shakespearian English, which this book is supposed to be written in, according to the editor Professor Royal Skousen). As an active member of the Church of Jesus Chris of Latter Day Saints (AKA "Mormon Church"), I am told to read the scriptures (which for the LDS members includes: the standard Old and the New Testaments, The Book of Mormon, The Pearl of Great Price, The Doctrine and Covenants) everyday. I find prose style difficult to comprehend, but obedience to the commandments is one of the key principles of my religion.
The other reason why I've been avoiding reading The Book of Mormon is that I did not really believe the whole proposition: a small group of people migrated to the American continent (first group right after the Tower of Babel, the 2nd group sometime right before the fall of the southern Jewish kingdom of Judah, and the last group right after the fall), founded distinct civilizations (at minimum large tribes), and finally the more savage group killed off the other group, and the surviving savage group either died off, or became parts of the Native Americans. Thankfully, the LDS denomination is very forgiving; as you can see in the Book of Mormon, Alma 32:27 (one of the key passages taught by the LDS missionaries):
But behold, if ye will awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith, yea, even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words.
Resolved to obey the commandment, I started looking into this Book of Mormon, and so far, I am being blown away by the YouTube I can find on both the book and the LDS founder Joseph Smith. Let's say you are a hard core non-believer, but you go through a Burning Bush experience or the Pillars of Cloud and Fire as depicted in the Bible. Once you re-establish trust in your own eyes and brain, you will have no choice but to believe in God, right? I am beginning to think that The Book of Mormon is an evidence that is similar to the Pillars of Cloud and Fire, or Serpent on a Staff: there is no secular explanation for the phenomenon, for how else to explain that an uneducated young farmer in the American frontier can recite from memory this 500+ pages of sophisticated and intricate narrative in less than 3 months, without any back and forth, or cross-referencing (according to all eye-witness of the process, some of whom never became an LDS members and had no reason to be a part of a hoax–as non-believes attribute the LDS founding story to be)–unless Joseph Smith secretly trained himself into a master oratory epic poet like Homer, and suddenly performed this miraculous feat among just a few choice observers in a Nowheres Ville in the American frontier? In the introduction to his edition of The Book of Mormon, the editor Professor Royal Skousen explains his introduction that the book seems to be a result of single-pass oratory dictation from Joseph Smith.
If you suspect that The Book of Mormon is an inspired message from God, then of course the right thing to do is to get as near as you can to the moment of the dictation (assuming that you would not be so favored by God as to be given a repeat revelation just for you). And that's what this edition of the The Book of Mormon is about.