Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies
The Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS short or Farms; in German: Foundation for archeology and mormonismusbezogene subjects) was founded in 1979 as a private research organization and in 1997 became part of the Brigham Young University in Provo in the US state of Utah . Since 2004 the organization has been called the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship (Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Studies).
The Farms logo shows the program. It contains characters from the four most important languages for studies of the Book of Mormon: the Hebrew Aleph at the top left , the first letter a symbol for the beginning, the Greek Omega at the bottom right , the last letter a symbol for the end. At the bottom left there is an Egyptian hieroglyph for the sun god Re as a symbol for the resurrection and at the top right a stylized Mayan glyph as a symbol for the studies of Central America.
FARMS sponsors studies and research on the Book of Mormon , the Book of Abraham , the Old and New Testaments , as well as studies on the origins of early Christian traditions, ancient temples, and other related topics. FARMS has gained international fame in professional circles through intensive collaboration in the digitization of the Dead Sea Scrolls and their translation.
The scientific work of FARMS appears in its own publications "Journal of Book of Mormon Studies", in scientific journals from other editors and as books, some of which are self-edited and some of which are published by scientific publishers. As is common in the scientific world, the work of FARMS is subject to the review and criticism of its specialist colleagues and is developed according to generally recognized scientific standards.
The only German translations of FARMS publications in printed form have been published by LDS BOOKS.
Controversy
FARMS is known for its critical book reviews of works that deal with their field of work. Particularly critical works that seek to expose the Book of Mormon as a forgery and to expose the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as a sequence of fraud and violence come off very badly. Of course, the authors of such works try to shake the credibility of FARMS.
A rather small, extremely liberal group within the Church regards the hypotheses with which FARMS approaches the research, particularly the view of the Book of Mormon as a true historical account of actual events, as too naive.
Further, members who follow traditional views of the Book of Mormon and take an indifferent view of Church history fear that FARMS may find unpleasant facts that could weaken faith and encourage controversy. These people, if they are concerned with the subject at all, perceive the scientific dispute as unchristian.