Mormon, Moses, and the Representation of Reality

by Richard L. Bushman

Overview

Abstract: In this essay, Richard Bushman borrows a critical perspective from Erich Auerbach's Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. He analyzes the representation of antiquity in two of Joseph Smith's striking translations, the Book of Mormon and the Book of Moses. The two texts, produced within a few years of one another, created distinctive stages on which to dramatize the human-God relationship. The question is: What can we learn from this comparison about God, prophets, and human destiny?

Product Details

BN ID:	2940162462866
Publisher:	Interpreter Foundation
Publication date:	08/15/2021
Series:	Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship , #46
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	120 KB

About the Author

Richard Bushman was born in Salt Lake City in 1931 and brought up in Portland, Oregon. He received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Harvard University and taught at Brigham Young University, Boston University, and the University of Delaware. He retired as Gouverneur Morris Professor of History at Columbia University in 2001 and was visiting Howard W. Hunter Chair of Mormon Studies at Claremont Graduate University from 2008 to 2011. He is the author of a number of books including Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling. He served as Co-General Editor of the Joseph Smith Papers until 2012 and in 1997 founded the Mormon Scholars Foundation that fosters the development of young Latter-day Saint scholars. He is now co-director of the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts in New York City. With his wife, Claudia Bushman, he is the father of six children and twenty grandchildren. He has served as a bishop and stake president and currently is patriarch of the New York Young Single Adult Stake.