Thank you, Mr. Stoddard.
You may well have written a teaching outline for a semester class. This essay has been a joy to read. I have been a persistent student of this marvelous volume throughout my life, yet such observations as you put forth have escaped me cognitively as well as consciously. I agree with every one of your points and wish that they had been more apparent to me all along.
Camille NeilsonOctober 10, 2015
I really enjoyed this! I too wish it had been longer and think you should consider a series. At USU I took "The Bible as Literature", but didn't really love the class. My dislike had more to do with the professor than the content. This piece was very insightful and I would love to read more!
David MazelOctober 10, 2015
Interesting analysis, Mr. Stoddard. I (and maybe some of the others here) would be interested in reading some of your books--can you let me know the titles and publishers etc.?
cbowerOctober 10, 2015
I love great literature in all its beautiful forms and am always thankful to read insights like this about our beloved Book of Mormon. I too would enjoy more about this. How about a series of webinars of in-depth study of this amazing example of literature.
SElzeyOctober 8, 2015
This "English person" says thank you for this enjoyable read! It was like being in a literature class again. Could there be a followup on the other literary aspects? Choose "effective vs. affected language usage" . . . I'm not sure what that is.
dermot sheilsOctober 8, 2015
I really enjoyed your analysis. It explained a lot in an understandable way. I had a chuckle at "spoiler alert".
bfwebsterOctober 7, 2015
I'm always amazed by those who dismiss the Book of Mormon as "dull", "poorly written", "stilted", "simplistic" and so on. As you note, it is a profoundly complex book. There are subtle uses of rhetoric and foreshadowing, very complex narrative strains, dramatic shifts in time passage (the very long book of Alma only covers 40 years; the very short book of Omni covers about 140), good men who have weaknesses, bad men who have strengths and even admirable qualities, an astoundingly consistent internal geography, and -- in the end -- a heartbreaking and chilling tragedy about a people who knowingly choose to descend from utopic peace to horrific visciousness and, in the end, destruction.
Just the sort of thing one would expect a 24-year-old farmer with three years of education, living in upstate New York, to invent, no?
Tom JohnsonOctober 7, 2015
Thanks, Mark, for sharing your knowledge and insights.
Robert SiskOctober 7, 2015
"Either accept its divine origins or give it a Nobel prize for literature."
Or, having done one, consider doing the other.
Bob Sisk
Chandler, Arizona
Tom MerrillOctober 7, 2015
This is the best analysis I've ever seen of this great book. The only criticism I have is I wish it would have been longer.
Often lost in the jeering section of the Large and Spacious Building is the absolute masterful story that Mormon has woven. Yet, the book wasn't his opus magnus, it was his ONLY work. Now modern scholarship is finding a great number of parallels of the stories and the backdrops in the Mezoamerican archaeological record.
Thank you for this insightful piece.
Comments | Return to Story
MJAllredOctober 20, 2015
Thank you, Mr. Stoddard. You may well have written a teaching outline for a semester class. This essay has been a joy to read. I have been a persistent student of this marvelous volume throughout my life, yet such observations as you put forth have escaped me cognitively as well as consciously. I agree with every one of your points and wish that they had been more apparent to me all along.
Camille NeilsonOctober 10, 2015
I really enjoyed this! I too wish it had been longer and think you should consider a series. At USU I took "The Bible as Literature", but didn't really love the class. My dislike had more to do with the professor than the content. This piece was very insightful and I would love to read more!
David MazelOctober 10, 2015
Interesting analysis, Mr. Stoddard. I (and maybe some of the others here) would be interested in reading some of your books--can you let me know the titles and publishers etc.?
cbowerOctober 10, 2015
I love great literature in all its beautiful forms and am always thankful to read insights like this about our beloved Book of Mormon. I too would enjoy more about this. How about a series of webinars of in-depth study of this amazing example of literature.
SElzeyOctober 8, 2015
This "English person" says thank you for this enjoyable read! It was like being in a literature class again. Could there be a followup on the other literary aspects? Choose "effective vs. affected language usage" . . . I'm not sure what that is.
dermot sheilsOctober 8, 2015
I really enjoyed your analysis. It explained a lot in an understandable way. I had a chuckle at "spoiler alert".
bfwebsterOctober 7, 2015
I'm always amazed by those who dismiss the Book of Mormon as "dull", "poorly written", "stilted", "simplistic" and so on. As you note, it is a profoundly complex book. There are subtle uses of rhetoric and foreshadowing, very complex narrative strains, dramatic shifts in time passage (the very long book of Alma only covers 40 years; the very short book of Omni covers about 140), good men who have weaknesses, bad men who have strengths and even admirable qualities, an astoundingly consistent internal geography, and -- in the end -- a heartbreaking and chilling tragedy about a people who knowingly choose to descend from utopic peace to horrific visciousness and, in the end, destruction. Just the sort of thing one would expect a 24-year-old farmer with three years of education, living in upstate New York, to invent, no?
Tom JohnsonOctober 7, 2015
Thanks, Mark, for sharing your knowledge and insights.
Robert SiskOctober 7, 2015
"Either accept its divine origins or give it a Nobel prize for literature." Or, having done one, consider doing the other. Bob Sisk Chandler, Arizona
Tom MerrillOctober 7, 2015
This is the best analysis I've ever seen of this great book. The only criticism I have is I wish it would have been longer. Often lost in the jeering section of the Large and Spacious Building is the absolute masterful story that Mormon has woven. Yet, the book wasn't his opus magnus, it was his ONLY work. Now modern scholarship is finding a great number of parallels of the stories and the backdrops in the Mezoamerican archaeological record. Thank you for this insightful piece.
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