As
part of my daily Scripture reading, I have started re-reading King Benjamin's
speech. One of the best books on the Book of Mormon is that of King Benjamin's Speech: "That Ye May
Learn Wisdom" eds. John W. Welch and Stephen D. Ricks (Provo, Utah:
Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1998) which goes into great
detail into various issues, such as the Ancient Near Eastern background of the
speech, literary forms (e.g., chiasmus) contained therein, and other exegetical
issues. Fortunately, the
book is available for free online
Another
important article on King Benjamin's Speech is that of
John
A. Tvedtnes, King
Benjamin and the Feast of Tabernacles
The
ever-growing evidence of the textual complexity and ancient background of the
Book of Mormon is a great difficulty posed to the theory that the Book of
Mormon was the production of Joseph Smith’s imagination in the 1820s; instead,
the growing body of evidence for its antiquity and historicity makes more sense
if we approach the text as Joseph Smith’s translation of an ancient document.
