Structural chapter reading chart: The Book of Mormon
This chart helps you track your reading progress in the Book of Mormon by showing the structure of its storyline. It shows the natural major and minor subdivisions of books so that you spend less time orienting yourself and more time gaining insights.
2 Nephi 3—Four Josephs
Here’s a brief PowerPoint slideshow and lesson plan that helps answer, “Who are the four people Lehi talks about in 2 Ne. 3 who are all named Joseph?” I’ve also made a timeline where you can try to figure out what order the Josephs were born in (i.e., who came first on a timeline of world history). Also included are helpful application questions for why this matters today.
The Original Chapter Breaks in the Book of Mormon
Did you know that the Book of Mormon prophets had different chapter breaks than we do now? Why did the book of Alma originally have only 30 chapters, and now it has 63? Here’s a table that shows the original chapter breaks in the Book of Mormon and a post on how knowing this can help your personal scripture study.
The Book of Mormon without punctuation
Here is a Microsoft Word document I’ve created with the full text of the Book of Mormon with all the punctuation removed. I’ve done this because it more closely approximates what the original manuscript (and the printer’s manuscript) looked like as Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon. While the translation was performed by a prophet based on inspiration, the paragraphing, sentence breaks, and punctuation were performed by a regular, non-LDS, educated man based on ordinary, mundane principles.
Do-It-Yourself Book of Mormon
Here’s what I learned when I created my own customized the layout of the Book of Mormon from the files on my Do-It-Yourself Scripture page. I created my own personalized edition of the scriptures that is annotated in a way that made sense to me. Since I am sometimes asked this question, let me clarify: I am not talking about writing your own scriptures, or altering the wording of the current scriptures in order to satisfy your preferences. I am talking about choosing fonts and page size, inserting headings where a new section seems to begin, etc.