In this 2-part discussion, KC Kern (BookofMormonOnline.Net) speaks with Dr. Grant Hardy and his wife Heather Hardy. Grant Hardy is Professor of History and Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. He has a B.A. in Ancient Greek from Brigham Young University and Ph.D. in Chinese Language and Literature from Yale. He has authored Worlds of Bronze and Bamboo: Sima Qian’s Conquest of History; The Establishment of the Han Empire and Imperial China; and Understanding the Book of Mormon: A Reader’s Guide, as well as the Introduction for Royal Skousen’s recent Yale edition of the Book of Mormon. He has also edited The Book of Mormon: A Reader’s Edition; Enduring Ties: Poems of Family Relationships; and the Oxford History of Historical Writing. Vol. 1. His 36-lecture DVD/CD course for The Teaching Company entitled “Great Minds of the Eastern Intellectual Tradition” will be released this summer.

Heather Hardy has a BS and an MBA from Brigham Young University (she says the latter seemed like a good idea when Grant was studying Greek; someone was going to have to support the family someday). She worked in university finances at Yale and then as the scholarship coordinator at BYU for a couple of years. She has published articles in Dialogue and the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, but is mostly a full-time reader masquerading as a stay-at-home mother. Grant and Heather have been married for 28 years and have been talking to each other non-stop the whole time.

This interview is broken in two parts:
Part 1: Introductions, early personal, academic, and scholarly experiences, and approaching the Book of Mormon as world scripture and literature.
Part 2: Understanding the Book of Mormon: A Reader’s Guide, thoughts on narrative structures, phraseology, historicity, evidences, anachronisms, Book of Mormon usage in the LDS Church, and on balancing faith and reason.