Noel B. Reynolds: Mormon Scholar

Noel Beldon Reynolds is a professor emeritus of political science at Brigham Young University. He served in several administration positions at BYU, including associate academic vice president, chair of the Department of Philosophy, director of General Education, director of FARMS, and executive director of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship.

He has been a Liberal Arts Fellow at Harvard Law School, a Visitor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Edinburgh, visiting professor at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Scholar-in-Residence at BYU’s Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies. Reynolds was born in 1942 in Los Angeles, California. He was reared in Cody, Wyoming, and served in Uruguay and Argentina as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints], of which he is a member. He earned his PhD degree from the Department of Government at Harvard University.

His interests range widely, from legal and political philosophy (with a special interest in Plato’s political theory), constitutionalism, and the rule of law, to authorship (wordprint) studies, early Christian theology and history, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Book of Mormon. He was one of the editors for Macmillan’s Encyclopedia of Mormonism. He produced The Dead Sea Scrolls Electronic Library published by Brill. He was one of the scholars featured on Journey of Faith and Messiah: Behold the Lamb of God.

Reynolds presided over the Florida Fort Lauderdale Mission for The Church of Jesus Christ from 2005 to 2008. He served as president of the Mount Timpanogos Utah Temple from 2011 through 2014. Reynolds and his wife, Sydney, are the parents of eleven children. They live in Orem, Utah