Customer Reviews

Easy-To-Read: Book of Mormon

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I certainly commend young readers who earnestly and sincerely try to read through the Book of Mormon. I know when I had tried to read it in grade school, it was very difficult for me to understand simply because my education to that point had not sufficed for the difficulty level of this sacred writ.

Even though I don't think this book here was meant to substitute for the original, I do think Lynn Matthews Anderson has provided a text that will prove invaluable for telling young readers what The Book Of Mormon says in very elementary English. I've read this and it certainly has the potential to make a world of difference for helping our young readers learn about its teachings.

I'll add a comparison of different Holy Bible translations and what one might consider to be an approximate Book Of Mormon counterpart (in terms of "readability"):

King James Version (advanced readers) - The Book Of Mormon (as translated by the prophet Joseph Smith)

New Living Translation (junior high reading) - A Plain English Reference to the Book of Mormon by Timothy J. Wilson

Good News Bible (children friendly) - Easy-To-Read: Book of Mormon by Lynn Matthews Anderson

I hope this information proves helpful to pursuers of The Book of Mormon - I still advice that one read the original text alongside whatever level of reading (for comprehensive purposes) you are most comfortable with. Blessings to you.

We are an LDS family who has faithful family scripture study and we encourage our children to also have scripture study on their own. The Easy-to-Read Book of Mormon allows even the youngest reader to actually understand on their own what the Book of Mormon is saying. We have been very grateful for the knowledge, insights and love for the Book of Mormon that our younger children have been able to gain from reading this book. We do encourage our children who are older to read straight from the scriptures. However, when they do begin to, they already have a very good understanding and love for the Book of Mormon that they have gained from reading this easy to read version.

Before we purchased this book, our younger children would attempt to "study" on their own, which was commendable, but in reality, they understood very little of what they read. In contrast, our first-grader is currently reading and understanding the Easy-to-Read Book of Mormon.

We have found this to be a faithful "translation" of what is written in the Book of Mormon. It follows every single scripture word for word, and simply puts it in simpler language. We do prefer the original scripture for obvious reasons. But this book is a wonderful option for a reader who is struggling to understand the scriptures. It is also excellent for a younger reader to use while they study the original text of the Book of Mormon.

Thank you, Lynn Anderson, for this good work!

anderson's background in grammer and old english styles allows her to take original text to a more readable and simplistic version. After reading original text you can become a little bogged down in it's old english style, as translated by j. smith in the early 1800's. The new easy to read version of the book of morman does not take any new docterine approaches. Sticks directly to the orginal text but uses english background to bring the message of ancient america home to the comman man. Great work and great contribution to sticking to orginal text and themes.

The King James style english of the current Book of Mormon confuses the heck out of me when I try to read it. I do not understand why, in the reformed Egyptian, it was written that way but I'm sure Joseph Smith had a good reason for putting it down that way on paper when he looked through the Urim & Thumb-um to get his revelation.

Love this book! It is great to have for the younger kids and other persons who have a difficult time reading and understanding the "Book Of Mormon" It arrived in a timely manner and was just as discribed. Thank You

Few books of similar notoriety are so utterly tedious to read. Joseph Smith Junior's Book of Mormon (BoM), which purports to be scripture and is considered as such by Mormons (L.D.S., Community of Christ, various other factions of Mormonism), makes for singularly tiresome and bland reading matter. Mark Twain, in chapter 16 of his "Roughing It", describes this work as "cloroform in print" and so it is! To quote Mark Twain in the context wherein that memorably apt phrase appears:

"All men have heard of the Mormon 'Bible', but few except the 'elect' have seen it, or, at least, taken the trouble to read it. I brought away a copy from Salt Lake. The book is a curiosity to me, it is such a pretentious affair, and yet so slow, so sleepy; such an insipid mess of inspiration. It is chloroform in print. If Joseph Smith composed this book, the act was a miracle keeping awake while he did it was, at any rate. If he, according to tradition, merely translated it from certain ancient and mysteriously-engraved plates of copper, which he declares he found under a stone, in an out-of-the-way locality, the work of translating was equally a miracle, for the same reason. The book seems to be merely a prosy detail of imaginary history, with the Old Testament for a model; followed by a tedious plagiarism of the New Testament. The author labored to give his words and phrases the quaint, old-fashioned sound and structure of our King James translation of the Scriptures; and the result is a mongrel, half modern glibness, and half ancient simplicity and gravity. The latter is awkward and constrained; the former natural, but grotesque by the contrast. Whenever he found his speech growing too modern, which was about every sentence or two, he ladled in a few such Scriptural phrases as 'exceeding sore', 'and it came to pass', etc., and made things satisfactory again. And 'it came to pass' was his pet [phrase, one among such others]. If he had left that out, his 'Bible' would have been only a pamphlet."

Ah, how sweet it is to savour that prestigious and cogent description of the putative Mormon prophet Smith's wearisome and clumsy forgery! Yet, because of the impact that the BoM has had on folk religion, right down to current times, one feels an obligation to read this literary monstrosity in order to understand the phenomenom of Mormonism.

What to do to make the onerous task less disagreeable and quicker? One can read the BoM in translation; there have been several into various languages, of which this commentator has two translations into Spanish, one put out by the L.D.S. Mormons (of the "Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints"), copyrighted 1992, and another distributed by the R.L.D.S. Community of Christ (of the formerly named Reorganized Church of Jesus of Latter Day Saints), 3rd ed., 1979. These Spanish translations, especially the first mentioned, read more fluently, dissolving some of Smith's crudely archaic English, than does the work's English original.

Nonethess, the excessive length at which Smith recounts his tales, and places long-winded speeches and accounts of visions into the mouths of his ancient cast of characters, still tries one's patience sorely. For a book which Joseph Smith supposedly translated from a vanished original (if ever such ancient gold and metal plates existed, which is more than doubtful!) that had abridged, in a process itself under "inspiration", earlier writings by the supposed prophets and others to whom Smith attributed the separately named parts of the BoM, it is astonishing how much dross and excessive length remains in such a putative abridgement! Does one really have to cope with such lengthy and flaccid verbosity just to complete the chore of reading through Smith's fakery?

Well, actually, no! One can read an abridgement of Joseph Smith Junior's tiresome narratives and pseudo-prophetical speeches and get through the unwelcome chore with welcome rapidity! There have been a few such abridgements over the years. Currently available is Lynn Matthews Anderson's simplified version of the BoM. Shortening it and putting Smith's contorted archaism's into modern and highly readable English, the reader can breeze his way through this piece of religious fiction in very short order. The BoM really does not merit any closer attention than what Anerson (who, be it noted, is a "true believer" and a member of the L.D.S. cult) makes of it, anyway, unless one addresses the BoM as a dutiful scholar or has to make use of it in apologetic endeavours, debate, and close analysis.

Stripped of its pretentious aspirations, the BoM's narratives seem more triflingly inconsequential and insipid than inspiring. Anderson's prose is lean and straightforward, stripping the nonessentials of wording and detail away to leave the bare (even bald!) and unadorned accounts as the rather silly and arbitrary tales that they are. The many visions and speeches recounted in the BoM more obviously reveal themselves to the reader as the uncouth (but rudimentarily clever) confections from Biblical models, and gauchely awkward ones at that, which they are.

Anderson makes her abridgement of the BoM from the accepted L.D.S. text of the work. There are many corruptions in the L.D.S. text, especially when compared to the more faithful R.L.D.S. editions of it, or, certainly, to the critical texts of the BoM which have been undertaken. However, such matters are of little import in using and commending a welcome abridgement such as Anderson's is. Get it, read it, and mostly forget about it, having done your reader's duty to history and to this bit of Americana lore!

Few books of similar notoriety are so utterly tedious to read. Joseph Smith Junior's Book of Mormon (BoM), which purports to be scripture and is considered as such by Mormons (L.D.S., Community of Christ, various other factions of Mormonism), makes for singularly tiresome and bland reading matter. Mark Twain, in chapter 16 of his "Roughing It", describes this work as "cloroform in print" and so it is! To quote Mark Twain in the context wherein that memorably apt phrase appears:

"All men have heard of the Mormon 'Bible', but few except the 'elect' have seen it, or, at least, taken the trouble to read it. I brought away a copy from Salt Lake. The book is a curiosity to me, it is such a pretentious affair, and yet so slow, so sleepy; such an insipid mess of inspiration. It is chloroform in print. If Joseph Smith composed this book, the act was a miracle keeping awake while he did it was, at any rate. If he, according to tradition, merely translated it from certain ancient and mysteriously-engraved plates of copper, which he declares he found under a stone, in an out-of-the-way locality, the work of translating was equally a miracle, for the same reason. The book seems to be merely a prosy detail of imaginary history, with the Old Testament for a model; followed by a tedious plagiarism of the New Testament. The author labored to give his words and phrases the quaint, old-fashioned sound and structure of our King James translation of the Scriptures; and the result is a mongrel, half modern glibness, and half ancient simplicity and gravity. The latter is awkward and constrained; the former natural, but grotesque by the contrast. Whenever he found his speech growing too modern, which was about every sentence or two, he ladled in a few such Scriptural phrases as 'exceeding sore', 'and it came to pass', etc., and made things satisfactory again. And 'it came to pass' was his pet [phrase, one among such others]. If he had left that out, his 'Bible' would have been only a pamphlet."

Ah, how sweet it is to savour that prestigious and cogent description of the putative Mormon prophet Smith's wearisome and clumsy forgery! Yet, because of the impact that the BoM has had on folk religion, right down to current times, one feels an obligation to read this literary monstrosity in order to understand the phenomenom of Mormonism.

What to do to make the onerous task less disagreeable and quicker? One can read the BoM in translation; there have been several into various languages, of which this commentator has two translations into Spanish, one put out by the L.D.S. Mormons (of the "Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints"), copyrighted 1992, and another distributed by the R.L.D.S. Community of Christ (of the formerly named Reorganized Church of Jesus of Latter Day Saints), 3rd ed., 1979. These Spanish translations, especially the first mentioned, read more fluently, dissolving some of Smith's crudely archaic English, than does the work's English original.

Nonethess, the excessive length at which Smith recounts his tales, and places long-winded speeches and accounts of visions into the mouths of his ancient cast of characters, still tries one's patience sorely. For a book which Joseph Smith supposedly translated from a vanished original (if ever such ancient gold and metal plates existed, which is more than doubtful!) that had abridged, yet under "inspiration", earlier writings by the supposed prophets and others to whom Smith attributed the separately named parts of the BoM, it is astonishing how much dross and excessive length remains in such a putative abridgement! Does one really have to cope with such lengthy and flaccid verbosity just to complete the chore of reading through Smith's fakery?

Well, actually, no! One can read an abridgement of Joseph Smith Junior's tiresome narratives and pseudo-prophetical speeches and get through the unwelcome chore with welcome rapidity! There have been a few such abridgements over the years. Currently available is Lynn Matthews Anderson's simplified version of the BoM. Shortening it and putting Smith's contorted archaism's into modern and highly readable English, the reader can breeze his way through this piece of religious fiction in very short order. The BoM really does not merit any closer attention than what Anerson (who, be it noted, is a "true believer" and a member of the L.D.S. cult) makes of it, anyway, unless one addresses the BoM as a dutiful scholar or has to make use of it in apologetic endeavours, debate, and close analysis.

Stripped of its pretentious aspirations, the BoM's narratives seem more trifling and foolish than inspiring. Anderson's prose is lean and straightforward, stripping the nonessentials of wording and detail away to leave the bare (even bald!) and unadorned accounts as the rather silly and arbitrary tales that they are. The many visions and speeches recounted in the BoM more obviously reveal themselves to the reader as the uncouth (but rudimentarily clever) confections from Biblical models, and gauchely awkward ones at that, which they are.

Anderson makes her abridgement of the BoM from the accepted L.D.S. text of the work. There are many corruptions in the L.D.S. text, especially when compared to the more faithful R.L.D.S. editions of it, or, certainly, to the critical texts of the BoM which have been undertaken. However, such matters are of little import in using and commending a welcome abridgement such as Anderson's is. Get it, read it, and mostly forget about it, having done your reader's duty to history and to this bit of Americana lore!