Edward Dembski was not a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints when he decided to translate the Book of Mormon into Esperanto, but he did believe that the book he was translating was the word of God. When he started his work in 1980, there were official translations of the Book of Mormon in three Eastern European languages: Czech, Western Armenian, and Croatian. The Polish and Russian translations were published in 1981, but after those, the next Eastern European translation, Hungarian, would not be completed until 1991.1 The Iron Curtain constrained missionary opportunities in Eastern Europe and, in the 1980s, Esperanto represented a way for Mormon Esperantists to part the Iron Curtain in fellowship. Robert Blair, a linguistics professor at Brigham Young University (BYU), and Paul Kern, the longtime anchor of the Mormon Esperanto Society, or Por Esperanto Mormonaro (PEM), were key players.2 Kern...

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