Back in 2005, when President Hinckley issued his challenge to read the Book of Mormon by the end of the year, there was some discussion in the Bloggernacle about whether a version of the Book of Mormon existed in plain English. Well it turns out that versions do exist, but I undertook to create a new one, mostly for my own edification. The exercise requires one to consider the ramifications of every word and punctuation mark, and I have learned a great deal in the process.

But it is also exceedingly slow, and I do have other projects to work on. It took me over a year to finish 1 Nephi. (2007 was mostly spent polishing it, but I have since moved on through 2 Nephi 6). Since we are studying the Book of Mormon in Sunday School this year, I thought it might be helpful to share what I have so far. KC’s website seemed like a compatible venue, and he has kindly agreed to host it.

In the hope of speeding things up (and creating a better product in the process) I have turned the project into a wiki. That means you can participate in the project. Here’s the text of the Welcome page

Introduction

The goal of this project is to produce a plain English version of the Book of Mormon that reflects the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints circa 2008. The resulting product should incorporate updated vocabulary, improved grammar, paragraphs edited to clearly elucidate concepts and eliminate redundancy, and occasional clarifications of meaning. The inevitable cost of this prosaic approach is that more creative forms of writing undertaken by the original authors (e.g., poetic, chiastic) will be lost. It is also possible that the original intent of the authors may be lost, too. Wherever latter-day revelation provides an improved understanding of a concept than that prevailing in ancient times, minimal clarifications reflecting current teachings have been made.

Organization

The subdivisions of the book (called “accounts” here) have been reorganized to correspond to each custodian of the plates, rather than to the original book names. Hence, the Books of 1 Nephi and 2 Nephi have been combined into The Account of Nephi, Son of Lehi, while the Book of Alma has been divided among Mormon’s abridgments of the accounts of Alma, son of Alma; Helaman, son of Alma; and Shiblon, son of Helaman. Each custodian’s account is further divided into chapters and subchapters, most covering either a discrete story within the historical narrative, a vision, or a sermon (for chapters) or topic within the sermon (for subchapters). However, some chapters, particularly in the account of Nephi, are dedicated to explaining the logic of the recordkeeping. Each account has its own table of contents with links to each chapter and subchapter. Each chapter and subchapter, in turn, contains a link to the account’s table of contents, as well as direct links to the preceding and succeeding chapters.

As of this writing (January 2008), only the proposed text of 1 Nephi has been completed. The page Contents of the Book of Mormon lists all of the accounts that will eventually be rendered into plain English, but no chapter structure has been proposed beyond The Account of Nephi, son of Lehi. The main page for that account lists all the proposed chapters and subchapters, whether or not they have been filled with text.

I have not proposed any plain English text for the Isaiah chapters, nor do I plan to. Such an effort would best be undertaken by somebody with a knowledge of Hebrew.

If you want to participate in this project, please create an account and click on the “Community Portal” link in the “navigation” box on the left. Otherwise you can proceed to The Contents of the Book of Mormon.

If you have something to contribute, but do not want to learn the whole wiki process, you can leave a comment on the blog or send me an e-mail at Last_lemming2003@yahoo.com.