You're not going to be here. Oh, Testing one two three testing one two three. This is Radio Free Mormon Sunday School Broadcasting Behind Enemy Lines.

Tonight's episode is going to be lesson six of the come follow me manual where the course of study for 2024 is the Book of Mormon.

And tonight's subject is going to be specifically about the Book of Mormon critical text project because the reading assignment, which is

2ndly 5 1 and 2, chapters 1 and 2, has an interesting correlation for me and an interesting story in my history that I've never ever told you about to my recollection even though I've been podcasting for over seven years and this was somewhat of a significant event in my life as a book of Mormon scholar.

So let me see if I can get the

There we go there There it is. Lesson number six Mormon Sunday School tagline where you learn stuff you're never going to hear in regular Sunday school.

As I said a second Nephi 1 through 2,

it's lesson number 6 for February 5th through 11th of 2024

in the Come Follow Me Manual.

But once again, we're gonna be focusing not just on one verse which we did

last week last week we focused on one verse in the book of Mormon and that verse was

the 600 year prophecy of Jesus. Today we're going to focus even more narrowly, not just on a verse, not just on a sentence, but really on a word in the book of Mormon and that word makes all the difference. But to get to that

story I have to give you some background on the Book of Mormon Critical Text Project,

what it is, what it's accomplished and then how I became involved with it.

So let's go over here to the next slide.

The Book of Mormon Critical Text Project. It commenced in 1998 and went on for about 25 years. I suppose someone could say it's still going on, but I think the main part of it went on for 25 years. It was headed up by Royal Skousin, who is a professor

at Brigham Young University. Now what is a critical text?

Critical texts have been done for other very, very famous and sometimes ancient books.

For instance, in New Testament studies,

the critical text refers to a Greek text of the New Testament

that is based on a combination of the earliest and most accurate manuscripts available.

The goal is to provide the most accurate earliest text possible

...