Colby Townsend

June 9th 2020 Update:

Colby Townsend, a graduate of our master’s program, won the Mormon History Association prize for best thesis this year, "Rewriting Eden with the Book of Mormon: Joseph Smith and the Reception of Genesis 1-6 in Early America". Congrats to Colby, who is heading out to Indiana for a PhD program in August 2020!

https://twitter.com/MormonHistAssoc/status/1269072010753175552/photo/1
2018 Article Highlight:

Colby Townsend is a first-year MA student in the Department of History, studying the ways religious individuals have composed texts that become standards, classics, or scripture for their communities.

His review of Michael Coogan’s The Ten Commandments: A Short History of an Ancient Text (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015) was recently published in Journal of Hebrew Scriptures.

His essay, “‘Behold, Other Scriptures I would that Ye Should Write’: Malachi in the Book of Mormon,” is forthcoming in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought. 

A revision of his undergraduate honors thesis, in which he examines how the King James Version of Genesis 2-4 influenced the writing of the Book of Mormon, has been accepted for publication in the Contemporary Studies in Scripture series at Greg Kofford Books under the title Eden in the Book of Mormon: Appropriation and Retelling of Genesis 2-4.

These publications are part of Colby’s larger project to examine closely, from literary- and historical-critical perspectives, how the King James Bible influenced the composition of Joseph Smith’s religious literature.

Colby credits both the editors at these journals and the professors in the USU history department—especially Norman Jones and Philip Barlow—for helping him to refine these projects. Please join us in congratulating Colby on this wonderful news.