In a recent post, I pleaded with my Latter-day Saint friends to defend the Bible—not just parts of it, but the whole of it as God’s Word. Sadly, some current trends in LDS scholarship threaten to do the opposite. Recently I have seen an explosion of popularity among Latter-day Saint apologists of the theory that…
I used to love how well the Book of Mormon seemed to fit into the Biblical narrative. For instance, I delighted in imagining Lehi preaching alongside Jeremiah and warning against the Babylonian captivity. But shortly after I left the Church, I came across an argument that showed how the Book of Mormon actually distorted the…
One of the most distinctive teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the belief that we lived with God before being born on earth. But does this teaching actually appear in the Church’s foundational scripture, the Book of Mormon? While there are a few passages that Latter-day Saints cite in support…
When I was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I believed that the Book of Mormon helped to clarify the Bible. One of the ways that I thought it did this was by offering a more accurate, easy to understand, and inspired version of the text of the Isaiah chapters…
Latter-day Saints revere the Book of Mormon as sacred scripture, and as the “most correct book of any on the earth.” They view it as the “keystone” of their religion. But there’s a significant problem. The Book of Mormon does not teach key LDS doctrines, such as temple ordinances, postmortem repentance, or the three degrees…