The Book of Mormon is subtitled “Another Testament of Jesus Christ.” According to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints website,

The Book of Mormon is a volume of holy scripture comparable to the Bible. It is a record of God’s dealings with ancient inhabitants of the Americas and contains the fulness of the everlasting gospel. [1]

Most members of the church read both the Bible and the Book of Mormon. Sunday School classes teach a three-year rotation with a year spent studying the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the Book of Mormon.* So, the three are familiar enough to you, and you probably see many similarities between them.

You probably won’t be surprised to hear that when I read the Book of Mormon, I don’t recognize the same voice, the same message, or any more than a superficial comparison between the Bible and the Book of Mormon. I understand that might offend you, but I hope you will at least consider my perspective. You might find it helpful, at least, to know why orthodox Christians like me cannot accept the Book of Mormon as Scripture.

I want to offer the following points of contrast: the Bible and the Book of Mormon don’t have comparable sources, don’t have a comparable theme, don’t have a comparable writing style, the prophetic voice is not comparable, the moral standing is not comparable, and the glory that shines from the Book of Mormon does not compare to the glory that shines forth from the Bible.

We will deal with two of those in this installment.

A Contrast of Sources

The manuscript evidence for the Bible is overwhelming in its extent and witness. We have copies of the Hebrew Old Testament from 200 years before the Word was made flesh. The discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls, dating back as far as 300 years before God became a man, provides incredible support for the accuracy and reliability of the Old Testament. We have 5,800 Greek and Latin manuscripts of the New Testament, some dating back to the 2^nd century AD – within a century of the conclusion of the original work. Amongst all of these manuscripts, scholars estimate that we have somewhere near 92% agreement – a staggering percentage when considering that these manuscripts were hand-copied with various degrees of quality control.

Because of the breadth and depth of available manuscripts, we can examine our translations of the Bible from the original Hebrew and Greek. We know that the Bible in English faithfully translates the Greek and Hebrew texts they represent. We can see for ourselves whether or not the Bible was correctly translated. We can see whether doctrines, teachings, or ideas were added that do not have support from the manuscript traditions. This allows confidence that the Bible we hold in our hands is the very Word of God. The Bible might be the most thoroughly sourced written work in the history of the world.

Compare this to the Book of Mormon. According to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints website,

After Mormon completed his writings, he delivered the account to his son Moroni, who added a few words of his own and hid up the plates in the Hill Cumorah. On September 21, 1823, the same Moroni, then a glorified, resurrected being, appeared to the Prophet Joseph Smith and instructed him relative to the ancient record and its destined translation into the English language.

In due course the plates were delivered to Joseph Smith, who translated them by the gift and power of God. [2]

These plates are not available for examination. No scrutiny of Joseph Smith’s translation work is possible, at least with the Book of Mormon. Where we can examine Smith’s ability as a translator doesn’t give us much confidence. Consider Joseph Smith’s translation of Romans 4:5. The King James Version says,

But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.

The Joseph Smith translation says,

But to him that seeketh not to be justified by the law of works, but believeth on him who justifieth not the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.

There is no support for Smith’s translation anywhere, especially not the insertion of the word “not” in the phrase “justifieth not the ungodly.” Among all the various textual traditions, including the Alexandrian, the Byzantine, and the Textus Receptus, I do not know of a single textual variant in the entire verse, let alone a negative that reverses its meaning.

But of course, Joseph Smith didn’t claim to translate anything, and nobody claims that he had any expertise in Biblical languages. The Book of Mormon includes an account of a Jewish man and his family who left Jerusalem around the time of the Babylonian captivity (a fact that is strangely missing from the account, given its intensity and all-consuming nature).[3] Yet, strangely, it is not claimed that the original gold plates were written in Hebrew but in “Reformed Egyptian” – a language still unknown today. Even if “Reformed Egyptian” were a known language, it would be impossible to scrutinize Joseph Smith’s translation. Nor is it claimed that Smith did any actual translation work at all, but rather that he was supplied with two “seer stones” (also called “interpreters”) and used another seer stone in his hat.[4]

Joseph related that when he finally obtained the plates from Moroni in 1827, he also received two stones to be used in translating them. He and close acquaintances left accounts of these stones, describing them as white or clear in appearance, set in silver bows or rims like modern eyeglasses or spectacles, and connected to a large breastplate.

The text of the Book of Mormon calls these stones “interpreters” and explains that they “were prepared from the beginning, and were handed down from generation to generation, for the purpose of interpreting languages,” being “kept and preserved by the hand of the Lord” (Mosiah 28:14‒15, 20).[5]

So, the Book of Mormon has no record other than the testimony of Joseph Smith and those who witnessed his work. These men give their witness not to the accuracy of Smith’s translation but to the fact that he translated it “by the gift and power of God” and that the work is true. The Book of Mormon did not come by translation but by revelation. We can scrutinize the translations of the Old and New Testaments, but we must take Joseph Smith’s word for it that he rendered a faithful account of the reformed Egyptian he was dictating to his scribes. Since Joseph Smith himself did not claim to know the language he translated, his claim is that God gave him the words to record. He was incapable of knowing whether his revelation was connected to the words on the gold plates he translated.

And this makes it impossible to say that the Book of Mormon is “comparable” to the Bible. The Bible is very clear about the transmission of the Word of God. “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God” – that is, God breathed the Words.[6] And this happened when “holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.” [7] We know what words were penned under the inspiration of God, for we have readily available such an abundance of ancient manuscripts, all shockingly consistent, to tell us that the Word of God translated into our language is the very words the Holy Spirit moved those holy men to speak.

And this is the point: God does not require us to rely on the word of a single individual with no possibility of examination or scrutiny for any part of the Old and New Testaments. We have no good reason to think that God changed how He presented truth when it comes to the Book of Mormon.

A Contrast of Themes

The Bible contains a single, driving message in every part, whether it be law, history, poetry, prophecy, gospel, epistle, or apocalypse. That message is, “I am God, and there is none else.” [8] Every story, every poem, every law, every prophetic word, and especially the gospel itself tells us something about God. In the books of the law (Genesis – Deuteronomy), we see a vivid display of the holiness of God. Our sin has tainted us and made it impossible for us to approach such a holy God. We see how God graciously provided a way for us to approach Him in worship until He provided the Messiah to make that way permanent.

In the historical accounts of the Bible, we see God’s unyielding commitment to His promise to send a Redeemer. Several times, we see David on the verge of annihilation, surviving only by a surprising providence, and we remember that God promised to raise up the Messiah from David’s seed. God never wavered in His commitment to His people, and we see that played out in real-life stories time and time again.

In the poetic passages of the Bible, we see God’s glory and grandeur expressed in majestic psalms and witty sayings. In the prophetic passages, we see God’s repeated warnings to His wayward people and His intention to save them despite their many rebellions and rejections of His Lordship.

But especially in the gospel, we see the fullest account of God’s grace, kindness, and love in the gift of His Son. As Paul declares,

But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8)

John tells us in his gospel that “we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). The most vivid revelation of God comes in the face of Jesus Christ. Truly, if we have seen Christ, we have seen the Father, for Jesus shows us what God is like. All of His kindness, every one of His miracles, His goodness, His purity, and His love for mankind are all explained by the life and especially the death of Jesus Christ. And the death of Jesus, in particular, reveals God the Father. For we see the Father’s wrath against sin and His refusal to come to terms with it, His commitment to justice, His determination to provide sinners with a substitute in Jesus Christ, His satisfaction with the sacrifice of that substitute, the pardon He extends for Christ’s sake, the peace He offers, the fact that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself. The Bible is brimming over with the glory of God on every page.

I don’t see this same thing in the Book of Mormon. I read of the bickering between the sons of Lehi. I see the insistence that the family embrace Lehi’s vision and the family’s rejection of Laman and Lemuel, the nonconformists. I see the preeminence of visions and revelations, the authority granted to those who receive them, and the insistence that everyone surrender to these visions on their own merits, without any objective reason other than the say-so of the revelator. But the authority of God and His glorious nature take a back seat to the one who has the revelation. His vision is unchallengeable and above scrutiny.

This is not consistent at all with the way God speaks in His word. Even in the prophetic books of the Bible, where God sets forth His case against His people, God never gives His prophets an unverifiable truth claim that the people must believe or face dire consequences. Instead, God describes the sins of his people. Those do not include the sin of “not taking the prophet’s word for it that he had a vision.” The sins include abuse of the poor, Sabbath-breaking, idolatry, and all the perversions that accompany it. The sins are laid out clearly with plenty of examples. Only after God has set forth Israel’s crimes does He warn of the punishment that is coming. And even then, God issues many warnings before He finally responds in wrath. But God’s purpose in punishing Israel is not to eliminate them but to correct them. Because God is still their God, and they are still His people.

When I read the early chapters of I Nephi, where the background of the entire Book of Mormon is set forth, I don’t find reasonable demands being placed on the people. Instead, I see a kind of conditioning and manipulation taking place, as the family is expected to take Lehi’s word for everything and cannot verify any of his visions. Still, they are condemned when they won’t surrender their conscience.

We could discuss at length the justice or injustice of this. I seriously doubt that you, dear reader, would willingly surrender your conscience to a family member with such a vision. If your father or uncle or cousin were to announce at the next family gathering that God gave them a revelation that the modern-day LDS church is now apostate and that God was raising up your relative to lead forth a new, “restored” church, you would not follow. I’m guessing you would want some kind of verification, not unlike Laman and Lemuel.

But the point isn’t to scrutinize Lehi’s family. The point is that the Book of Mormon isn’t about God. Not really. From time to time, God makes appearances in the story, the way an absent boss might drop in at the job site with his clean hard hat in place, or the way you might wave at a neighbor as he comes home from work. But God isn’t central to the Book of Mormon. He is peripheral. That makes the Book of Mormon very different from the Bible.

Let the reader understand.

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[1] https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bofm/introduction?lang=eng

[2] https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bofm/introduction?lang=eng

[3] It should be noted that at the time, Jeremiah prophecied that any resident of Jerusalem who went to Egypt to escape the captivity would be destroyed. See Jeremiah 42-43.

[4] https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/2015/10/joseph-the-seer?lang=eng

[5] https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/2015/10/joseph-the-seer?lang=eng

[6] 2 Timothy 3:16

[7] 2 Peter 1:21

[8] Isaiah 45:5, 22; 46:9

*My apologies: the LDS church has a 4-year rotation between the Old and New Testaments, the Book of Mormon, and Doctrines & Covenant. I was mistaken in this in my original post.