A New Project: Blogging The Book Of Mormon

Last year President Hinckley issued a challenge to all members of the LDS Church to read the Book of Mormon by the end of 2005. I have no good excuses but I never made it past 1 Nephi 3. Thank goodness for the principle of repentance!!!  I’ve decided that I’m going to take up President Hinckley’s challenge a little bit late and finish the Book of Mormon over the next six to nine months. Its going to go a little bit more slowly than it normally would (the book really isn’t that long) because I want to blog my thoughts and questions as I study and read.  The point of this post is to ask for volunteers to join me.

I anticipate that this project will provide a very cool commentary on the Book Of Mormon. I have tons of thoughts and questions about the doctrine and principles found in that book and many of those are written in my copy of the scriptures but can’t be found anywhere else in an organized form. I’m betting that many of the readers of this blog and others have similar notes and thoughts that haven’t been put in an organized format…this is our chance to have a searchable and organized place where those thoughts can be written and discussed in a blog format.

Anyone* who is interested in helping me with this effort please contact me at my email address jeremy at themannings dot org or leave a comment on this post. Your participation will probably require a few minutes of your time once or twice a week (or as often as you’d like to comment on your reading and study) and it will also require that you do a study of the Book of Mormon at the same pace as the blog group so your posts and comments will be in context (this pace and other details still need to be worked out).

Thanks in advance,

Jeremy

*I believe this effort will be best accomplished by those who actually believe in the divine origins of the Book of Mormon and the stated claims of Joseph Smith, the book’s translator, regarding the book’s authenticity. That doesn’t mean questions about doctrines and principles taught in the Book of Mormon can’t be brought up but it does mean that for purposes of this proposed new blog it will be assumed that all questions of the historicity of the Book of Mormon have been settled.

UPDATE 03/30/2006
We have four volunteers already who are willing to participate. Excellent. Now we need to come up with the URL we want to use. I have done no research on this yet. Any ideas?

6 Comments »

1. Sorry, I did not look into that info for you.

   Comment by Michael — March 27, 2006 @ 12:51 pm

2. I would love to join you Jeremy, I have been desperate to get my name off of God’s list of slackers whom have not yet answered the BoM challenge.

   Comment by Devron Andersen — March 28, 2006 @ 2:53 pm

3. Devron,

   One of the best comments on my blog ever. You rule. I’ll let you know when we’re going to start…it will be soon. It will be easier for all of us to get off that list of slackers if we are constantly griping at each other to post discussion and comments about the reading assignments!!!

   Comment by Jeremy Manning — March 28, 2006 @ 4:58 pm

4. I’m in.

   Comment by Daniel — March 29, 2006 @ 11:08 am

5. I have often thought of doing this myself. I’m glad that you are. I would love to join you. This will be the best thing that ever happened to blogging!! …As long as you don’t mind your host server being translated!

   If you need me to set up a blog for you, I can at my family site… just let me know.

   I will expect my first reading assigment this week. As I need to get started.

   Also, remember Joe? The guy I worked with when we came to visit you back east and drove around upstate NY and saw all the church sites? Well, he and I have talked about doing this already. I’m sure he’ll be in too. I’ll send him here.

   Cody

   Comment by Cody — March 31, 2006 @ 8:44 am

6. Sorry, buddy I’ve moved on to the Old Testament. However, I’m still interested in your stick of Jesse insights.

   Comment by Brett — June 4, 2006 @ 9:55 pm

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