By the Hand of Mormon: The American Scripture That Launched a New World Religion [Hardcover]

This is a closely written, thoughtful (if polemical) book by a devoted scholar. It is certainly provocative reading, whether you happen to be a Mormon or not. New York Times A remarkably lucid and useful study of the patterns of American prejudices against the Mormon people. It provides also a valuable paradigm for the study of all religious heresy. Harold Bloom, Yale University

"A remarkably lucid and useful study of the patterns of American prejudices against the Mormon people. It provides also a valuable paradigm for the study of all religious heresy."

With over 100 million copies in print, the Book of Mormon has spawned a vast religious empire, but it remains little discussed outside Mormon circles. Now Terryl Givens offers a full-length treatment of this highly influential work, illuminating many facets of this uniquely American scripture. Givens explores how the Book of Mormon has been a sacred sign, or divine testament of the Last Days and of Joseph Smith's role as a modern-day prophet. He shows how it has functioned as an ancient history of the pre-Columbian peopling of the Western Hemisphere, first by a small Old World exodus occurring in the era of Babel, and later by groups from Jerusalem in the age of Jeremiah. Givens describes how it has been seen as a cultural product, the imaginative ravings of a rustic religion maker more inspired by the winds of culture than the breath of God. Or it is seen as a new American Bible or Fifth Gospel, displacing, supporting, or perverting the canonical World of God, according to the disposition of the reader? Givens also examines the Book's shifting relationship to Mormon doctrine and its changing reputation among theologians and scholars. Finally, in exploring what Martin Marty refers to as the Book of Mormon's "revelatory appeal," Givens highlights the Book's role as the engine behind what may be the next world religion. The most wide ranging study of the subject, By the Hand of Mormon will fascinate anyone curious about a religious people who, despite their numbers, remains very much strangers in our midst.

Terryl L. Givens is Professor of English at the University of Richmond, Virginia. He is the author of The Viper on the Hearth: Mormons, Myths, and the Construction of Heresy, winner of the Chipman Award from the Mormon History Association.