Second Witness: Analytical and Contextual Commentary on the Book of Mormon: Second Nephi Through Jacob

Second Witness: Analytical and Contextual Commentary on the Book of Mormon #2

by Brant A. Gardner

Stop looking for the Book of Mormon in Mesoamerica and start looking for Mesoamerica in the Book of Mormon! Second Witness, a new six-volume series from Greg Kofford Books, takes a detailed, verse-by-verse look at the Book of Mormon. It marshals the best of modern scholarship and new insights into a consistent picture of the Book of Mormon as a historical document. Taking a faithful but scholarly approach to the text and reading it through the insights of linguistics, anthropology, and ethnohistory, the commentary approaches the text from a variety of perspectives: how it was created, how it relates to history and culture, and what religious insights it provides.
The commentary accepts the best modern scholarship, which focuses on a particular region of Mesoamerica as the most plausible location for the Book of Mormon’s setting. For the first time, that location—its peoples, cultures, and historical trends—are used as the backdrop for reading the text. The historical background is not presented as proof, but rather as an explanatory context.
The commentary does not forget Mormon’s purpose in writing. It discusses the doctrinal and theological aspects of the text and highlights the way in which Mormon created it to meet his goal of “convincing . . . the Jew and Gentile that Jesus is the Christ, the Eternal God.”

626 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 2007

Reviews

[Tyler · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have mixed feelings about this book. Some passages (commentary on the Isaiah chapters, Jacob 5, etc) was really valuable and helpful and I am really glad I read it. Other passages were of much less value. This entire commentary series assumes a Mesoamerican setting to the Book of Mormon and some of the author's arguments/interpretations about the meaning of the text are so deeply embedded in that assumption that it becomes highly speculative-- but sometimes he argues speculation as though it were fact. I particularly disliked where an interpretation of a certain passage was based on assumption after assumption after assumption, any or all of which may be incorrect, which would cause the entire argument to come falling down like a house of cards, and yet the author makes his argument as though he were standing on a far stronger foundation than he really is. I disliked those parts of the book. That is why I rated it three stars. Overall, still worth reading.

[David Harper · Rating 5 out of 5]

Isaiah chapters were fire

[Carl · Rating 4 out of 5]

With this volume we really get Brant Gardner the Mesoamerican anthropologist. My one complaint (and the reason I give this 4 stars instead of 5) is that he very much insists in his interpretation of what must have happened when the Nephites arrived in the New World and how they might have integrated themselves into the surrounding already-existing native population. He doesn't make his case 100% convincing for me, so a few caveats would have been in order as he sets his scenario out, and then assumes it in all of his commentary moving forward. (This mostly appears in his commentary on the Book of Jacob and a bit in the historical parts of 2 Nephi.)

As far as his commentary on the rest, I find it to be middling. Here is where his personal idiosyncrasies do not shine through. I found his commentary on Isaiah to be a pale echo of Joe Spencer's writings, and his commentary on Nephi and Jacob's discourses and doctrinal expositions to be of value, but not informed as well as others' has been. I do wonder how he might revise these volumes if he decided to do a 2nd edition, given some of the scholarship that has been written since their release in 2007. Joseph Spencer's work on Isaiah in Nephi and Jack Welch's The Legal Cases of the Book of Mormon (to deal with Sherem in Jacob 7) spring to mind as works that he would need to integrate, and that might change his conclusions and writings in this commentary.

Still, it gets 4 stars because he's smart, meticulous, and helps you go through the text with a fine-toothed comb. That's always valuable, even if I end up disagreeing with this or that interpretation. (Interpretations do not occur in a vacuum, and conversations between different scholars help fill that vacuum to help us all understand the Book of Mormon better.)

[Kent · Rating 3 out of 5]

Solid. I wish there were more information on each verse, and perhaps less speculation. Still, this is extremely useful, a huge step forward in Mormon commentaries -- just not to the level of non-Mormon biblical commentaries.

[Aaron · Rating 4 out of 5]

A continuation of the quality scholarship found in the first volume.