About the Author

Royal Skousen is Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at Brigham Young University, where he taught for 41 years. He is the author of numerous books on linguistic theory and on the Book of Mormon text. He lives in Spanish Fork, UT.

Reviews

"The product of over two decades of painstaking labor by Royal Skousen—a Brigham Young University professor of linguistics and English language, a Mormon and an occasional spelling-bee judge—this Yale edition aims to take us back to the text Smith envisioned as he translated, according to the faithful, from golden plates that he unearthed in upstate New York."—Stephen Prothero, Wall Street Journal

"A work of unique aesthetic and scholarly value, and an essential resource for scholarly approaches to the Book of Mormon."—Seth Perry, Journal of Ecclesiastical History

"Readers would do better to hear the Book of Mormon for what it is – a long, mostly sad story, told aloud. Royal Skousen has spent more than twenty years trying to get at that story told aloud, and it is hard to imagine coming closer than his 'earliest text.'"—Seth Perry, Journal of Ecclesiastical History

“…a commentary on the text of the Book of Mormon that will forever change the way Latter-day Saints approach modern scripture. Two hundred years from now… students of the Book of Mormon will still be poring over Skousen’s work. What he has accomplished is nothing short of phenomenal.”—Grant Hardy, Journal of Book of Mormon Studies

Listed as one of the "Christmas gifts for your demanding scholar" in 2009, Mormon Times

Selected as a Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2010 in the Religion category

"Royal Skousen has single-handedly brought the textual analysis of the Book of Mormon to a professional level on par with the finest classical and biblical scholarship. This volume is the culmination of his labors, and it is the most textually significant edition since Joseph Smith’s work was first published in 1830.  It takes us back to the original manuscript (as best we can reconstruct it) and sometimes beyond, to the very words that were first spoken by Joseph Smith to his scribes."—Grant Hardy, from the Introduction