Stan Larson

Textual Variants in Book of Mormon Manuscripts

Dialogue 10.4 (Winter 1977): 10–45
A great value of these early manuscripts is that for the most part they substantiate the correctness of the present Book of Mormon text—fully 99.9% of the text is published correctly. In textual criticism, however, evidence should be weighed, not counted, since a unique reading in a reliable source may be better than any number of readings in less reliable sources.

Omissions in the King James New Testament

Joseph Smith once wrote of the Bible: “I believe the Bible as it ought to be, as it came from the pen of the original writers.”[1] Unfortunately, none of the manuscripts penned or dictated by…

Intellectuals in Mormon History: An Update

Henry D. Moyle: A Chapter from Richard D. Poll’s Unpublished Biography

A “Meeting of the Brethren”

Another Look at Joseph Smith’s First Vision

The Odyssey of Thomas Stuart Ferguson

Dialogue, 23.4 (Winter 1990): 55–93

The odyssey of Ferguson is a quest for religious certitude through archaeological evidences, an attempt at scholarly verification of theological claims. Early in his career, Thomas Stuart Ferguson was instrumental in reducing our conception of the geography of the Book of Mormon from nearly the whole of both North and South America to the more limited area of southern Mexico and Central America. In the middle years of his career, he organized archaeological reconnaissance and fieldwork in the area of Mesoamerica. But in the last years of his career, he concluded that the archaeological evidence did not substantiate the Book of Mormon, and so he reduced (in his mind) the geography of the book to nothing at all in the real world.