Illuminating the Jaredite Records is the second book by the Book of Mormon Academy, a consortium established at Brigham Young University in 2013 with the goal of “foster[ing] critical thinking about the Book of Mormon and [making] academic, theological, and pedagogical research available to the wider public through publications and presentations” (p. v). The authors, all members of the Department of Ancient Scripture at BYU, each contributed explorations of a particular topic. The book—as its name implies—addresses the Jaredites, their records, and the impact of those records. The articles are categorized according to four methodological “lenses”: cultural-historical, narratological, reception-historical, and pedagogical. In all of them, the antiquity of the text is assumed, and I will assume the same.
Daniel L. Belnap, author and editor, opens the cultural-historical section with “‘They Are of Ancient Date’: Jaredite Traditions and the Politics of Gadianton's Dissent,” a chapter that examines how dissenting Nephites used...
