"Mark D. Thomas has rediscovered the Book of Mormon, much like Hans Frei's The Eclipse of the Biblical Narrative did for the Bible. He shows how frequent asides to the reader ('frame breaks') guide them to the intended devotional significance, and applies modern narratology with great effect, using Robert Alter's 'type-narrative' schema. This inaugurates a new era of Book of Mormon studies, demonstrating that a searching scrutiny is the greatest friend, and no enemy, of a sacred work, since there can be nothing more edifying than understanding the text." —Robert M. Price, Jesus Seminar Fellow, Westar Institute; editor, The Journal of Higher Criticism

"This astonishing book probes more deeply into the Book of Mormon's literary and spiritual qualities than any other work I know. Its analysis of narrative structures will provide, as Thomas hopes, 'a means for the current reader to enter into fully informed dialogue with the text.' His analyses may 'sound as a faint whisper from the ground of Being.' In short, the most influential American narrative of the nineteenth century has at last found the scholarly reader it deserves." —Wayne C. Booth, Pullman Professor of English, retired, University of Chicago; author, The Knowledge Most Worth Having

Mark D. Thomas has published on the Book of Mormon in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Sunstone, and the Journal of Higher Criticism. He is a contributor to The Word of God: Essays on Mormon Scripture and New Approaches to the Book of Mormon: Explorations in Critical Methodology, and co-editor of Jacob and the Angel: Mormon Readers and the Old Testament (forthcoming). As a founder of the Mormon Studies Seminar, he hosted the 1999 Biblical Archaeology Symposium at the University of Utah. Currently, he and his family reside in Salt Lake City, where he works in public finance.