John W. Welch
John W. (Jack) Welch grew up in southern California where his father was a prominent attorney. Before his mission, he attended Stanford and spent time studying in Salzburg, Austria. While serving as a missionary in Regensburg, Germany on August 16, 1967, Jack discovered the remarkable Hebrew literary form called chiasmus in the Book of Mormon. Many regard chiasmus as the most important Book of Mormon discovery in the last 40 years. Jack received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from BYU where he studied under Hugh Nibley. He married Jeannie Sutton, then spent two years at Oxford studying Greek philosophy. From there, Jack went to law school at Duke where he edited the law review and studied with the eminent New Testament scholar, James Charlesworth. He practiced law in Southern California for a few years, founding The Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS) in 1979. When Jack moved to Provo in 1980 to assume a faculty position with the J. Reuben Clark Law School, he brought FARMS with him and the modern era of Book of Mormon studies was born. Jack has dozens of series and titles to his credit as both an author and an editor, including The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley, and The Encyclopedia of Mormonism. He has been the editor of BYU Studies for 15 years. The most distinguished of Hugh Nibley’s students, Jack is generally considered the pre-eminent ancient scriptural scholar in the Church today. He has been a bishop twice and has served in a stake presidency. An avid skier, he and his wife have four children and eight grandchildren.