Reformatted Text of Book of Mormon Enhances Study

Just in time for the study of the Book of Mormon in the 2008 church-wide Sunday School courses, the Maxwell Institute recently released an updated and expanded edition of Donald W. Parry's Poetic Parallelisms in the Book of Mormon: The Complete Text.

This new edition seeks to enhance study of the Book of Mormon and features many improvements upon the first edition, which was released in 1992 under the title The Book of Mormon Text Reformatted. In this edition, Parry observes, "new examples of chiasmus, parallelisms, and figures of speech have been added to the volume," and it also "features a glossary of terms, chapter and verse headings on each page, and an index that lists the various forms, parallelisms, and figures, together with scriptural references. All of these additions and enhancements are designed to make this new edition more user friendly to the reader."

Parry notes that since the publication of the first edition, he has "received many affirmative communications from individuals as to how my work on poetic parallelisms in the Book of Mormon had positively impacted them," prompting him to issue a new edition. However, he reminds us "that there is no poetic, parallelistic, repetitious form or figure of speech that should become more important than the Book of Mormon's chief message, which is to convince 'the Jew and Gentile that Jesus is the Christ, the Eternal God' (Book of Mormon title page). Rather, all of these forms and figures are designed to present this message regarding Jesus Christ and his gospel in an unforgettable, understandable, artistic, and fascinating way."

Poetic Parallelisms is now available at the Maxwell Institute Web site (maxwellinstitute.byu.edu).