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from Meridian Magazine: Book of Mormon:Weighing, Measuring, and Judgment

By John A. Tvedtness

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But there are changes in the wind and though the number of critics seems to be increasing exponentially because of the internet, some serious non-LDS scholars have begun seeing the Book of Mormon as a valid topic of investigation, though most reject its claim of divine origin. This change in attitude may have played a role in prompting Doubleday to come to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 2004, seeking permission to publish the Book of Mormon for a non-LDS audience. Meanwhile, Oxford University Press has published two books on the Book of Mormon by Terryl Givens, an LDS professor at the University of Richmond, Virginia. These were his 1997 history of anti-Mormonism, The Viper on the Hearth: Mormons, Myths, and the Construction of Heresy , and his 2002 book, By the Hand of Mormon: The American Scripture that Launched a New World Religion Out of the Dust: Saints, Scholars, Skeptics, and the Book of Mormon , which is a serious look at the Book of Mormon and its skeptics, along with a survey of the scholarly work being done in regard to it. 2