LDS Freedom Forum

What are people's knowledge or opinions of Royal Skousen's work on fixing the text of the Book of Mormon?

"From the Original Manuscript to the current LDS edition of the Book of Mormon, various changes have made their way into the text. The Book of Mormon: The Earliest Text, attempts to sift through changes in the manuscript to bring the reader back to the best approximation of what the original text of the Book of Mormon would have said."

https://bookofmormoncentral.org/content ... liest-text

I think it’s great. I have a copy of the book.
Edit: I do allow for Joseph Smith to have made some corrections though in the second edition. The publisher got some things wrong in the first edition.

The punctuation is one of the main issues, as ever.

I have Skousen's book.
The problem is that 75% of the original manuscript was destroyed by water ingress in the cornerstone of the Nauvoo House, where it has been placed by Joseph. So most of Skousen's work has, by necessity, been based on the printer's manuscript. But his book is better and more accurate than the current edition published by any of the Restoration churches.
Personally I favour the Restored Covenant Edition published by the Zarahemla Research Foundation. They went through a similar process as Skousen did in reconstructing the original and removing errors which have crept in to the text.
It's very good in my view, and in Skousen's too, who reviewed it and said it was excellent.

Excellent work, including the formatting into sense lines.

However, his conjectural emendations (some having been suggested by others) are a mixed bag. IMHO, some are very reasonable, such as "his whole household," and others less so, especilaly if literary precedence is a criterion, which, IIRC, he has discussed; for instance, in changing "pleasing bar" to "pleading bar." Sure, this would be logical, and if correct, fine. But it would lose the poetry.