The Bible and the Latter-day Saint Tradition

By Richard Bushman

Latter-day Saints don’t know quite what to do with the Bible. They embrace it as the word of God, but only as translated correctly; according to the Book of Mormon, the Bible came from the original prophets in pure form, but the record has been corrupted. The 30 authors in this collection of essays to be published by the University of Utah Press exemplify how LDS scholars look on the Bible and how they react to current scholarship. The relationship with biblical scholarship has not always been friendly. For a century after Joseph Smith, modern critics eviscerated the Bible’s claims to be an inspired text while Mormons, swimming against the tide, preserved their belief in its divine origins. 

In this volume, Mormon scholars largely embrace biblical scholarship and try to make it useful to Church members even when it requires reshaping our beliefs. The classic problem:  how did Nephi come to include passages from Second Isaiah (chapters 40-66) in the Book of Mormon when those chapters were most certainly written long after Nephi died? One scholar’s solution: Joseph Smith’s translation was a text received by revelation which did not always conform to the writings on the plates. In the great tradition of prophetic discourse, current prophets can add to the words of previous prophets. The Ancient World of the Bible and Biblical Scholarship Among Latter-day Saints vividly documents Mormons laboring to define their place in the modern world of biblical studies. The question now: will Latter-day Saints create a critical tradition of their own regarding the Bible? (Taylor G. Petrey, Cory Crawford, and Eric Eliason, eds., The Bible and the Latter-day Saint Tradition, University of Utah Press, January 31, 2023.)