A Mormon scholar is called to South Florida to guide young door-to-door missionaries
He is a Harvard-educated world traveler, a political scientist who has led efforts to restore ancient texts and create a Dead Sea Scrolls computer database.
He also helped discover ''lost'' writings of English political philosopher Thomas Hobbes, led the script-writing for a PBS movie, edited the five-volume Mormon Encyclopedia and oversaw a group that writes about Mormon scripture.
Now the Brigham Young professor is in South Florida, pounding the pavement for Jesus, or at least overseeing the pavement-pounding.
Noel B. Reynolds, 63, has been sent by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to guide the 170 young missionaries who are walking door to door for the church in South Florida and the Bahamas. Called upon by their church, Reynolds and his wife Sydney left the six-bedroom house in Utah where they raised their 11 children and moved more than 2,500 miles away.
For his work, he receives no pay -- just a car, house and expenses.
That's what Mormons are expected to do, he says. ''That's how our church is,'' Reynolds says. ``We don't have a professional clergy. All the ecclesiastical functions of the church are provided by volunteer people who are called.''
Many of his young charges are thrilled to be working with a well-known Mormon researcher.
''To me, he's like a superstar -- like a sports idol -- he's like that in the church,'' says Aaron Atwood, 20, who knew about Reynolds' work with the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Michael Otterson, an LDS spokesman in Salt Lake City, says the church relies on Reynolds and about 300 other older members to run its missions around the globe. The leaders tend to be prominent and successful -- lawyers, doctors, scientists, professors and business leaders.
''They all have leadership skills,'' Otterson says.
These older professionals -- and the young missionaries -- have helped the church become one of the fastest growing faiths in America. The Mormon church is adding tens of thousands of new members a year in the United States alone.
MUCH TRAVEL
Reynolds spends a lot of time on the road, overseeing his sprawling district. Last week he was meeting with the Fort Lauderdale missionaries; the week before he traveled to Key West. He also meets individually with each missionary once every six weeks.
He believes in letting the young missionaries learn by taking charge of meetings -- and often sits silently while youth leaders give lectures or advise other missionaries.
Reynolds grew up on 160 acres on a family homestead in Wyoming. ''A cowboy,'' jokes his wife Sydney.
Like other young Mormon men, Reynolds raised enough money to do mission work for the church, becoming one of those familiar ''elders'' with the short-sleeved white shirts and ties, walking door to door.
The church sent him to Argentina and Uruguay.
''I learned to speak Spanish there,'' he says, adding, it was ``one of my favorite experiences. It made my faith stronger. Serving as a missionary . . . forces you to mature rapidly. You have to know why you believe and what you believe to share it every day with a skeptical world.''
ATTENDED HARVARD
After his missionary tour, Reynolds studied political science at Brigham Young. He earned a fellowship to study for a master's at Harvard, where he also received a doctorate.
Later, he did post-doctorate work on legal philosophy at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and at Hebrew University in Jerusalem -- where he also began his Dead Sea Scrolls work.
For 35 years, Reynolds has taught at Brigham Young or served as an administrator. In the mid-1980s, he directed the research and script-writing for Brigham Young's dramatization of the writing of the U.S. Constitution, which was shown on PBS. The film, A More Perfect Union, made a ''star'' of one of Reynolds' heroes -- James Madison, who wrote much of the Constitution and later became the country's fourth president.
Reynolds admires Madison so much that he brought to his temporary Plantation home a framed Madison autograph.
For years, Reynolds had been fascinated with how a ''statistical wordprint'' -- like a fingerprint -- can identify writers with their works, even those from centuries ago.
''Everyone has their own way of writing,'' he says. A computerized statistical analysis can check 60 key construction of phrases and word order to determine if an author has written a piece, he says.
That led in the 1990s to Reynolds helping uncover the author of three early discourses written by English political philosopher Hobbes, which were published anonymously in 1620. The discovery became international news.
Reynolds also joined with a team of biblical scholars and computer experts to create an inexpensive computer database that gave scholars around the world access to the Dead Sea Scrolls.
WORK ON SCROLLS
The 2,000-year-old biblical writings had been discovered in caves near the Dead Sea in the 1930s. But the scrolls were seen by few scholars until the Brigham Young team photographed and translated them into English from ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek and Latin.
As executive director of the Institute for the Study and Preservation of Ancient Religious Texts at Brigham Young, Reynolds raised $500,000 to produce the works on compact discs. The discs are now considered the most accurate transcriptions of the scrolls. While photographing the scrolls -- most are now in Jerusalem -- the team found that some characters had been misinterpreted or left out in earlier transcriptions, Reynolds says.
His institute is also helping rescue early Christian and Islamic manuscripts.
Researchers, for example, have restored writings on papyrus that had been burned in a fire at a sixth century church in Petra, Jordan. A special light-scanning process allowed researchers to make out the writing on the blackened pages. Researchers then discovered the church had been a repository for ancient municipal records, from property sales to legal settlements.
The institute has also helped Syriac-speaking Christians by photographing and putting on computer disks their ancient manuscripts, stored at the Vatican and in Lebanon. In the future, researchers hope to go to Syria and Iraq to photograph more ancient Syriac-Christian documents, Reynolds says.
Before coming to South Florida, Reynolds also headed a more controversial group within the church, the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS). The Foundation studies Mormon scripture and publishes the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies.
Although Reynolds is considered a moderate, other Mormon scripture scholars associated with FARMS have gone ''to extremes to defend the church,'' says Ron Priddis, managing director of the Utah-based Signature Press, which publishes books on Mormonism.
In harsh articles, they have attacked some of his writers, he says. Seven authors published by Signature have been ex-communicated. But Reynolds says Signature focuses on publishing books that dispute LDS core beliefs. Within the church, he adds, there is a ''tiny minority on a mission'' to persuade other Mormons not to literally believe The Book of Mormon.
When others are thinking about retiring, Reynolds is working 10 to 12 hours a day.
''Serving the church has always been a priority and here's an opportunity for me to do it full-time,'' he says. ``There are more than 300 mission presidents and we all believe we have received a divinely inspired call from a prophet of God to serve.''