The Interpreter: Journal of Mormon Scripture – 4 Stars

The Interpreter: Journal of Mormon Scripture – 4 Stars

Title: The Interpreter: Journal of Mormon Scripture

Author: The Interpreter Foundation

Publisher: The Interpreter Foundation

Year: Online Publication, Softcover 2012 - current

Rating:   4 STARS

Price and Purchasing Options: All of the content in these journals are available online, and they are available as they are released.  This would allow people to read the research, pages, and essays before they are published and that is available at – www.MormonInterpreter.com.  However, for those of you, like me, who like the book rather than the online content – these are published and sold on Amazon for around $5 a piece.

Review:  A project that launched after FARMS repositioned itself into a more faith based Neal A Maxwell Institute rather than apologist studies, The Interpreter cropped up as a non-profit foundation and as a medium to fulfill the needs in the LDS community of scholarly research and apologetic work.

Each Journal contains essays, papers, and book reviews under the tradition of the scholar; regularly giving new insight.  A happy consequence of this most recent transition into The Interpreter has been an expansion of contributors.  Whereas before in order to be published by FARMS you almost needed it be in FARMS – The Interpreter allows submissions from any and all sources.  They are then heavily vetted, analyzed, source checked and then determined if they are worthy of publication.  This process allows for people from different walks of life, and different forms of scholarly research to present papers that would be relevant. 

This allows the politician (Mitt Romney) to submit a paper, or the physicist in NYU to submit a paper, or the Nutritional Science professor to write something that can contribute significantly from his field of focus.  It suddenly become please that a study of Mormon Scripture is much more broad than the traditional “Religious Studies” background. 

I also appreciate that as academic as the journal is, it is still faith based.  What I mean by this is that you are not going to have to filter through papers of questionable character for design – you are getting academic research that is actually pointed towards increased confidence and trust in the Mormon Scriptures rather than questioning itself into answers.  Some home spun members of the Church will question anything that isn’t published by Deseret Book or by BYU – but the Interpreter is not only a safe place to go for research, but it actually seems to be the only place to go for this type of study now that FARMs is “rebranded” and repositioned, and The Interpreter is only growing.  Recently it seems that they have even published a number of independent books in conjunction with Deseret Book, and it sounds like they are working on more.  The Interpreter promises to be an long term institution that is voluntarily filling a necessary void in the LDS Community, that would have been there otherwise.

These journal are great, and fulfill a wonderful need within the LDS Community of  continued research.

4 Stars, easily!

Suggestions:  I would recommend getting a could of volumes at a time, next time you are ordering something from Amazon – something easy to do because they are so cheap.  Then I would keep them in the bathroom (apologies for being so crude)– this is a great bathroom book.  That would allow you to read through a few essays a week, or skim through quickly and find the real gems.  WARNING – this is scholarly work – so there are long boring parts.  I read through all the boring parts, but normal people should skip what they are not interested in.

 

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Review #12

Tags: 4 Stars, The Interpreter: Journal of Mormon Scripture, The Interpreter Foundation, FARMS, Research