The Bible is Enough

The LDS Church teaches in their scripture:

“We believe the Bible as far as it is translated correctly.”

Articles of Faith 1:8

The LDS Church clarifies what exactly and why exactly this is in their claimed God-breathed word. Simplified for children, the LDS Church explains:

“When people translated [the bible], they changed or left out some important parts. That’s why we believe the Bible is the word of God except for any errors or missing parts. The Book of Mormon also contains teachings of prophets. Joseph Smith translated it with Heavenly Father’s help, so nothing was changed or left out.”

Article of Faith 8, The Friend*, July 2015

That is a big claim to make. But, is it true?

*The Friend is a children's magazine authorized and published by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Has the Bible Been Changed?

The LDS Church aren't the only ones who claim that the Bible has been changed over time. Many believe that through means of a cross-lingual “telephone game” over hundreds of years, the Bible has lost content. If this is true, it also collaborates with the Book of Mormon scripture 1 Nephi 13:40 stating the Bible has lost "plain and precious truths."

To find out if the Bible has been altered we need to use textual criticism- the process used to find the original wording of a text.

A testament to the new testament

When using textual criticism, the more manuscripts we have, the better. This is also true for how early the manuscripts are. Looking at the New Testament, because we don't want to get lost in the supposed “telephone game”, let's look at how many manuscripts we have in the New Testament’s original language (Greek) compared to other writings:

The New Testament, the first evidence we have for Jesus, completely blows every other work of antiquity out of the water. Many will then claim “Yes, we have the manuscripts but they are all different!” This shows a lack of study into the topic. With all the variants, scholars are able to deduce the meaning of the text through the vast abundance of ability to cross reference manuscripts.

Even Bart Ehrman, one of the world's biggest critics of Christianity, states:

“...the essential Christian beliefs are not affected by textual variants in the manuscript tradition of the New Testament.”

Misquoting Jesus p. 252

In actuality, less than 1% of these variants change the meaning of any given passage; people are aware of which passages these are. We know what the biblical authors wrote.

The most correct book on earth?

Remember the quote from the magazine?

“The Book of Mormon also contains teachings of prophets. Joseph Smith translated it with Heavenly Father’s help, so nothing was changed or left out.”

This is some high praise for the Book of Mormon. Joseph smith himself said:

“I told the brethren that the Book of Mormon was the most correct of any book on earth... a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than by any other book.”

History of the Church 4:461

It is only right that the most correct book on earth leads you to such intimacy with God... right?

flawless translation?

Smith's claim of the Book of Mormon's superiority to other books leads to the natural question of “How was such a book translated so well? It's just as old as the bible!”

Martin Harris, one of the supposed witnesses of the gold plates give us insight to its translation:

“By aid of the seer stone, sentences would appear and were read by the prophet and written... when finished he would say, 'written' and if correctly written, that sentence would disappear... but if not written correctly it remained until corrected, so that the translation was just as it was engraved on the plates, precisely in the language then used.”

"The Manner of Translating the Book of Mormon", Improvement Era vol. 42, October 1939; ChurchofJesusChrist.org

If inspired by God, this method would cause for a flawless translation. This book would have been translated correctly to the letter.* Truly a work of God... right?

*“And if there was a word wrongly written or even a letter incorrect the writing on the stones would remain there.” - Joseph F. Smith (History of the Church, Joseph Smith, Vol. 1, p54)

times are changing and so is scripture

The reality is that the LDS Church admits the Book of Mormon, at the time of this post, has undergone almost 4,000 changes.*

The LDS Church has changed this scripture, thousands of times. so, why would the Church say that nothing has been changed and nothing is left out in 2015?

Because of the nature of the story of the gold plates, there are no manuscripts to test the Book of Mormon we have today. These changes also aren't just grammatical but severely change the meaning of the text.

The Bible is Enough

The bible has stood the test of time for thousands of years and against countless critics. People have dedicated their lives to disproving the bible only to find the bible consistent through time, accurate in history, and miraculously kept in tact.

Jesus said:

Heaven and earth shall pass away: but my words shall not pass away.

Luke 21:33

If the Bible isn't trustworthy, nothing is. But, the Bible is trustworthy.

Try reading the gospel of John and see what you learn!