Book of Mormon Studies Podcast Introduction

Rosalynde Welch: Hi everybody, my name is Rosalynde Welch. I am the Associate Director of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship. And I'm here today to make an announcement that in 2024, as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints comes together to study the Book of Mormon, the Maxwell Institute will be introducing a new podcast, the Book of Mormon Studies podcast from the Maxwell Institute. We hope this will be a resource to enrich your personal study, to unite your family and really to bring us together as a global body of saints around the Book of Mormon in this upcoming year. The purpose of the podcast is to increase our faith and our understanding of the Book of Mormon, firstly, by undertaking a deep dive into the text of the Book of Mormon, really exploring what's between those covers, and secondly, by surveying the highlights of the existing Book of Mormon scholarship.

In some ways we are in a golden age of Book of Mormon scholarship. We have some key resources in place that allow a scholarly field to emerge and flourish. And we're seeing sort of at an unprecedented rate at new forms and kinds of Book of Mormon scholarship, building upon a foundation of faith that are helping us to understand the book in new and rich ways. And it's our hope and our expectation that by coming to understand the shape of this field of scholarship, your own personal study will be freshened up, will be enlivened, that you will have new perspectives and new tools in your own reading of the Book of Mormon. We hope you learn not just what the scholarship says, but how it asks questions and how it arrives at fruitful truth. We hope that the podcast will be appealing and informative to experts and novices in the Book of Mormon. We intend it to be both intellectually edifying and spiritually nourishing as well. We will come to the book both as scholars and as disciples. We will discuss intellectual questions around the Book of Mormon, but we will also share our favorite passages and discuss how the Book of Mormon has accompanied us in our own walk of discipleship.

We will have two episodes per month. The first of each one, the first episode each month, will focus on a different book in the Book of Mormon. So, 1st Nephi in January, 2nd Nephi in February, et cetera. In that first episode, we'll do a deep dive into the text, looking at its structure and its themes and its theology and its history. In the second episode released each month, we will survey the highlights of the existing literature on that book in the Book of Mormon. So what are the most important books or articles that have been written and what do they teach us and how do they teach us about the intent and the purpose of the Book of Mormon here? I will be interviewing Latter-day Saints scholars, including my colleagues here at the Maxwell Institute as well as wonderful colleagues over in religious education and other Latter-day Saints beyond the bounds of campus as well. So if you catch every episode, then by the end of the year in December, 2024, I hope you feel like you have your feet wet in this new field of Book of Mormon Studies. Throughout the season, we will rely on this book called Book of Mormon Studies, An Introduction and a Guide, a wonderful book put together by
my colleagues, Daniel Becerra, Amy Easton-Flake, Nick Frederick, and Joe Spencer, which has done kind of the foundational work of identifying and mapping this emerging field of Book of Women's Studies. Wanna give a shout out to them and acknowledge my reliance on their work. You don't need to own the book to follow along with the podcast, although it is a great book and you should buy it. You will find...these episodes in the same feed where you currently find the Maxwell Institute flagship podcast on Apple podcasts or Spotify wherever you go to get it. We will be recording in audio and video so if you enjoy the video aspect you can catch that over on YouTube. As I said we'll we hope to release two episodes per month. We will be you know roughly in sync with the with the Come Follow Me curriculum over the course of the year, but we won't be following along on a weekly basis. We want the freedom to step back, take in large views, zoom in when we want to. So we promise to get to Moroni 10 by December 31, 2024.

I just wanted to conclude by sharing a quote that I remember. I was an undergraduate here at BYU once upon a time, long, long ago. And I remember hearing President Hinckley bear his testimony of the Book of Mormon. And this is what he said. "The test of the Book of Mormon is in its reading. I speak as one who has read it again and again and tasted of its beauty and depth and power." That has also been my experience over the past several decades now when I have been privileged to turn my scholarly tools on the foundational scriptures of the Restoration. What I have found is that indeed the test of the Book of Mormon is in the reading. And it's our belief that the tools and perspectives that we explore on this podcast will enable you to read the Book of Mormon more deeply, more thoughtfully, more carefully will allow you to explore it and understand it at a deeper level than you ever have before. So that is our invitation. We invite you to join us, read and discover with us as we approach the Book of Mormon with the help of scholars and with the lens of faith in 2024. Thank you very much.