The Book of Mormon

If you have not read a chapter, do not lecture someone who has. This page tells you where to start reading, not what to feel about the book.

The question

The Book of Mormon presents itself as an ancient record of peoples in the Americas, written by prophets, hidden, and translated by Joseph Smith. Its title page calls it another testament of Jesus Christ, written to convince Jew and Gentile that Jesus is the Christ. For Latter-day Saints it is scripture. For Nicene Christians the question is whether that claim is true, because the book’s Jesus and the book’s future readers shape the rest of the faith.

A fair statement of the book

Taken on its own terms, the narrative runs from Jerusalem to a new land, through righteousness and collapse, and toward a visit of the risen Jesus to people in the Americas (3 Nephi 11). The Jesus of 3 Nephi teaches in words that echo the Sermon on the Mount, organizes a church, and is worshiped. The book’s voice is earnest, Protestant-sounding to many first-time Christian readers, and full of warnings against pride. Members love it because they meet Christ there, not because they enjoy a controversy.

Historical objections are real and should be named without a smirk: the question of ancient languages and archaeology, the translation process (including accounts of the seer stone), and the relationship of long passages to the King James Bible. Each of those is a field, not a punch line. This page does not settle them. It refuses the habit of quoting a critic’s summary as if you had read Mosiah.

A Christian starting point

Accept a short reading plan and keep it. Read the title page. Read 3 Nephi 11, the arrival of Jesus, beside John 20. Read the sermon in 3 Nephi beside Matthew 5–7 and notice both the likeness and the setting: a visit to the Americas after the resurrection, which the New Testament does not teach. Ask what work that visit is doing. For a Latter-day Saint it is testimony that Jesus is the Christ for the whole world. For a Nicene Christian it is an addition to the apostolic witness that has to be true or not true; it cannot be “inspiring either way” if it is being offered as history and as scripture.

Then ask how this Jesus relates to the Godhead their later teaching describes. The Book of Mormon’s language about the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost has been read in more than one way inside and outside the church. Do not announce that the book is “secretly modalist” or “secretly Nicene” as a party trick. Read a passage, ask what they see, and compare it with the Godhead as the church teaches it now.

Scripture to open together

• Book of Mormon title page.
• 3 Nephi 11.
• Matthew 5–7 beside the parallel sermon in 3 Nephi.
• John 20, as the resurrection meeting the four Gospels actually narrate.

Keep reading

• Joseph Smith and revelation
• The deity of Christ