What is the critical text project of the Book of Mormon?
From the beginning, the two goals of the critical text project have been (1) to recover the original English-language text of the Book of Mormon, and (2) to determine the history of the text (namely, how it has changed over time). There are two basic kinds of changes in the history of the text: (a) accidental errors in the transmission of the text, and (b) the editing out of nonstandard English. I began the critical text project in 1988 and have been working full time on it since then. 2. What has been published thus far? In 2001, FARMS/BYU published the first two volumes of the critical text, namely: a. The Original Manuscript of the Book of Mormon: Typographical Facsimile of the Extant Text 568 pages (including 41 pages of introduction and 16 pages of black-and-white ultraviolet and color photographs of fragments) b. The Printer’s Manuscript of the Book of Mormon: Typographical Facsimile of the Entire Text in Two Parts 1008 pages (bound in two parts, including 36 pages of introduct
