The Restoration Scripture Critical Editions Project seeks to publish critical editions of the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and Pearl of Great Price. Each volume will present the text with a thorough apparatus that tracks the variants across all of the editions and versions of those texts. For anyone studying the history, development, and transmission of Restoration scripture, these volumes will represent a significant literary destination and resource.
In 2022, the three general editors introduced this project to the Mormon History Association in Logan, Utah. Their papers charted the project’s roadmap, explained the theory behind critical editions, and outlined technology being developed for rending transcriptions and notations. Since the project’s inaugural announcement, momentum from that session has grown and generated greater interest.
One of our most exciting developments is new transcription technology. We are developing in-house software that expedites the comparative process of preparing critical texts and analytical notations. By transcribing directly into an analytical tool, our program renders a critical apparatus on the fly, greatly reducing the amount of overhead in formatting and typesetting readable yet technically robust passages.
Building complete critical texts necessitates a transcript of each manuscript and printed edition of each book of Restoration scripture. We have already employed two transcriptionists to work on the Book of Moses from the Pearl of Great Price. They currently fill 20 hours a week. This transcription stage will ultimately be our bottleneck—we’ll process hundreds of texts and millions of transcribed words. Funding transcriptionists will remain a significant effort of the project.
The project’s general editors have partnered with the Bay Area Mormon Studies Council to assist in raising funds. We have already received several generous donations and are actively soliciting more. Our website, https://rscep.org/#donate, has information on how to donate to the project.
We anticipate launching our in-house software program this fall and compiling critical text drafts of the first chapters of the Book of Moses before the end of the year.
As we reach various milestones, we’ll keep you updated here at this newsletter. Stay tuned.