Hello and welcome to another episode of the Maxwell Institute's Book of Mormon Studies podcast.

My name is Rosalind Welch. I host the podcast and I'm joined today by my colleague and my friend, Dr.

Jeffrey Cannon. Dr. Cannon is a research associate here at the Maxwell Institute,

where he has an awesome job. He teaches and studies the Book of Mormon and how saints around the

world read and understand the book. So he's an expert and we're so grateful to have him with us on the

show today. Welcome, Jeff.

Thanks, Rosalind. Happy to be here. Today we are focusing on the text of the book of Jacob,

which is a short but extremely powerful and memorable book here early in the Book of Mormon.

We won't be walking through every verse and chapter of

this book, but instead we'll be reviewing some sort of large-scale frameworks and ideas that readers

can have in mind as they begin their reading of the book of Jacob. So we think about this as

sort of like an introduction to your reading of the book of Jacob. And we think about this as sort of like an introduction to your

reading of the book of Jacob. And we hope that by the end of our time here, you have some new

ideas and some new tools to help you find new nourishment in the book of Jacob. So let's jump

right in, Jeff. I always like to start by talking about any context. Even before we read

a word in a book of scripture, it helps to have a little bit of context so that we can interpret

what we're reading. So share with us on the context that we should have in mind. Great. Thanks. I

absolutely agree. I always tell my students that context is very important to understanding

the text that we're looking at. And part of that, of course, is what is this thing? I always tell

my students, the first thing we do when we look at any text or we encounter any information is to look

at what it is, whether it's a book of scripture or a social media post or whatever it is.

So Jacob tells us at the beginning of his book that Nephi has given him some specific

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