Grant Hardy became intrigued with world religions, especially those of East Asia, as a young missionary. He has researched and written widely on various topics, but his study of the Book of Mormon led him to publish two landmark books that share important insights.
In his brief overview to Understanding the Book of Mormon, Hardy gives us ten observations about the Book of Mormon:
It is a long book.
It is written in a somewhat awkward, repetitious form of English.
It imitates the style of the King James Version.
It claims to be history.
It presents a complicated narrative.
It is a religious text.
It is basically a tragedy.
It is very didactic.
It is a human artifact.
Its basic structure is derived from the three narrators.
It is this last observation that forms the thesis for the majority of his work. Hardy contends that "If you're not seeing the narrators at every turn, you're not really reading the Book of Mormon--because that's how the book is constructed, regardless of who the author(s) may have been."
The three main narrators (Nephi, Mormon, and Moroni) each had distinct approaches as they presented history and revelation in their writings.
Join Laura Harris Hales as she has an enjoyable back-and-forth with an outstanding Book of Mormon scholar. Download Transcript
Extra Resources:
Episode 19 Transcript
Understanding the Book of Mormon: A Reader's Guide
The Book of Mormon: A Reader's Edition
LDS Perspectives Podcast
Episode 19: The Book of Mormon as Literature with Grant Hardy
Laura Hales: Hello. I’m Laura Harris Hales, your host for this episode of the LDS Perspectives Podcast. Today I’m here with Grant Hardy, author of Understanding the Book of Mormon. We will be talking about another strategy to enhance our study of the Book of Mormon. Grant Hardy is a professor of history and religious studies at the University of North Carolina in Asheville.
He has a bachelor’s in Ancient Greek from Brigham Young University and a PhD in Chinese language and literature from Yale. He has authored books on diverse topics such as Worlds of Bronze and Bamboo and Understanding the Book of Mormon: A Reader’s Guide. He’s also edited The Book of Mormon: A Reader’s Edition, Enduring Ties: Poems of Family Relationships, and the Oxford History of Historical Writing, Volume 1. Grant’s “Sacred Texts of the World,” a 36-lecture course for the Teaching Company was released in 2015 and follows his earlier course “Great Minds of the Eastern Intellectual Tradition.” Grant and his wife, Heather, have two children. Welcome, Grant.
Grant Hardy: Thank you. It’s good to be here.
Laura Hales: I have a stepson who is fluent in Chinese. How did you get interested in the Chinese language?
Grant Hardy: I went on a mission to Taiwan and learned Chinese there and became very interested in Chinese literature and history and philosophy. So the family joke is I went there as a missionary, and they sort of converted me a little bit. I think it happens fairly often.
Laura Hales: I think so, too. I have a lot of friends who went to Chinese-speaking missions, and they loved the people and loved the culture. From your bio, it appears that you are intrigued by world religions and those of the Far East, of course, because of China in particular. Can you pinpoint where that interest first developed?
Grant Hardy: Sure. It came from the mission. As you know, missionaries are pretty restricted in what they’re allowed to read and study because they’re focusing on missionary work. But in our mission, the mission president said that anything having to do with Chinese culture might be appropriate to help us be better missionaries. I found that Chinese culture was a vast, rich, sort of treasure trove of ideas and heritage and history. I used to get up an hour earlier than the mission rule, so I would have some time to read some Chinese literature and materials.
