Saturday, December 11, 2021

John L. Sorenson (1924-2021)

I just heard that John L. Sorenson passed away. He was 97 years of age. He authored a number of important books and articles on the Book of Mormon and Mesoamerica, including:

 

An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon (1985)

 

Vive Zapato! Hurray for the Shoe!" FARMS Review of Books on the Book of Mormon 6, no. 1 (1994): 297-361 (review of "Does the Shoe Fit? A Critique of the Limited Tehuantepec Geography" by Deanne G. Matheny)

 

Mormon’s Codex: An Ancient American Book (2013)

 

Sorenson also did a lot of work on pre-Columbian contact between the Old World and the New, including the following volume:

 

(with Carl L. Johannessen) World Trade and Biological Exchanges Before 1492 (rev. ed.; 2013)

Due to his great scholarly output on the Book of Mormon, the following from the book of Revelation comes to mind:

 

And I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours; and their works do follow them (Rev 14:13)