Do Mormons use the bible at all?

Answer 1

A Mormon perspective:

Mormons use the KJV of the Bible, and they also believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it has been translated correctly. There are many mistakes in the Bible made through lack of knowledge in translating the original text, or the deliberate leaving out of many important things pertaining to the salvation on man.

We use the Kings James Version of the Bible. Nothing in the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, or Pearl of Great Price contradicts the teachings of Holy Bible. All four of these books were 'given by inspiration of God'. The Bible is just as important to us.

The 8th article of faith says We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly! We say correctly because some people have changed its words in the past and that's not what God wants! The people who wrote the bible, the KJV, were told by God to write those words and he was very happy until people changed some words in HIS book... you guys hear we have another book called the book of Mormon. Yes we believe in that too!

I would like to state that although we are widely known as being Mormons. We are The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, LDS for short. Yes we believe in the bible as long as it is translated correctly. The bible has been changed and miss translated over the years and teachings have been lost as a result. I personal do not know what has been lost from the text. I believe that god will impress upon what is true and what is not in the bible.

I was walking through the woods one day and was spoken to by a spirit. I put everything he told me on paper. I am a human who can be quite manipulative. You should believe whatever I say from now on and do as I say to. I am not the son of GOD or anything just a human. But you should l follow my teachings and live your life the way that i say too.

A non-Mormon Christian perspective:

The qualifications mentioned in the Mormon position are precisely why the answer would be no, they do not believe the Bible. The parts which are included in the Bible are not in doubt textually to any significant degree and the alleged mistakes are in the portions with which the Mormons disagree doctrinally, they do not at all relate to alleged or scribal amendments or translation errors which, if there be any, do not at all compromise points of Biblical doctrine.

What the Mormon position actually is, in effect (although only partly stated above), that the truly authoritative books for them are the Book of Mormon, Doctrines and Covenants, and Pearl of Great Price, as well as the ongoing prophetic ministry of their leadership. These absolutely contradict clear Biblical doctrine on many important points and so it in effect the Bible is not really authoritative for them as it stands.

The Bible says of itself 'all scripture is given by inspiration of God...' 2 Timothy 3:16, not just some. So even though Mormons will say they believe in the Bible, the 'devil is in the detail.' And so, even though Mormons may claim to believe the Bible 'insofar as it is correctly translated' this is semantics for saying in effect 'no we don't', since they reject doctrines which are attested by numerous clear and correctly translated scriptures. Nor can it be shown with any integrity that anything necessary whatsoever has been left out of the Christian scriptures. In fact what they add in their writings as being necessary is in fact something which does not add to Christian revelation but flatly contradicts it.

And while it is certainly correct that the Mormons use the King James Bible, what is authoritative is the Mormon writings, including authoritative pronouncements of their leaders who they regard as having prophetic authority. If the KJV or any other version of the Christian scriptures was truly authoritative for them they would abandon their teachings which contradict the Bible teachings.

Another answer

God is perfect, man is not. However, man can be divinely inspired to assist in the work of God on earth. Writings of inspired men have been collected into canon of script, or scripture gathered approximately 300 BC. There are other writings that were not included within the "canon" or Bible. There were also several varied collections of writings comprising diverse collections comprising separate "Bibles" around that same period of time.

The important reality to be recognized is that unless the writings are a direct, firsthand account to man from God, the alternative levels of recopying, translating and interpretations are subject to real human error potential. Research by Suksaeresup and Thep-Ackrapong, (2009) revealed that "It is postulated that there are two major sources (of error in translation): the translator's erroneous reading of the (language) text and misinterpretation of (language) lexical meaning." A historical critical reflection of the evolutionary process that generated the multiplicity of Bible texts today are a direct result of this phenomenon.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) sustains the writings and teachings of the Bible as much or more than any other Christian religion. LDS members understand the issues just mentioned. Leaders and authorities of the LDS church have proclaimed, "The Holy Bible is a miracle! It is a miracle that the Bible's 4,000 years of sacred and secular history were recorded and preserved by the prophets, apostles, and inspired churchmen. It is a miracle that we have the Bible's powerful doctrine, principles, poetry, and stories. But most of all, it is a wonderful miracle that we have the account of the life, ministry, and words of Jesus, which was protected through the Dark Ages and through the conflicts of countless generations so that we may have it today. It is a miracle that the Bible literally contains within its pages the converting, healing Spirit of Christ, which has turned men's hearts for centuries, leading them to pray, to choose right paths, and to search to find their Savior … people say that 'Mormons are not Christians because they have their own Bible, the Book of Mormon.' To anyone harboring this misconception, we say that we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as our Savior and the author of our salvation and that we believe, revere, and love the Holy Bible." M. Russell Ballard, April 2007, The Miracle of the Holy Bible.And, "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has always been a Bible-believing church holding that the Bible contains the word of God as delivered to ancient prophets … Joseph Smith stated that one can 'see God's own handwriting in the sacred volume: and he who reads it oftenest will like it best, and he who is acquainted with it, will know the hand (of God) wherever he can see it'" Robert J. Matthews, "The Bible and Its Role in the Restoration", Liahona, Sept. 1980, 26

Christianity is the belief that Jesus is the Christ, the Holy Messiah, the Savior and Redeemer of all mankind. The Holy Bible helps us (mankind) come closer to Christ by following its teaching and principles.

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Another answer

Jesus of the LDS Church is not Jesus of the Bible. God of the LDS Church is not God of the Bible. In Mormon Doctrine, pages 332-323, we read: "...If Jesus Christ was the Son of God, and ... God the Father of Jesus Christ had a Father, you may suppose that he had a Father also. Where was there ever a son without a father? ...Hence if Jesus had a Father, can we not believe that he had a Father also?" Joseph Smith, in 1844, as recorded in the Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, pages 344-347, first told the audience that: "...every man has a natural, and, in our country, a constitutional right to be a FALSE PROPHET, as well as a true one..." Then on the next page, he says: "...I am going to tell you how God came to be God. We have imagined and supposed that God was God from all eternity. I will refute that idea and take away the veil, so that you may see." He tells that "...God himself was once as we are now..and you got to learn how to be Gods yourselves... the same as all Gods have done before you..."

The God of the Bible says: "...Is there a God beside me? Yea, there is no God; I know not any." (Is. 44:10) If God had a father and he had a father and so on, God of the Bible surely would know that! In the Bible, God calls us to "know," to "believe" and to "understand" who He is. God tells what happens to the false prophets who try to lead people after other gods: "If there arise among you a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder come to pass, whereof he spake unto thee, saying, Let us go after other gods, which thou hast not known, and let us serve them; thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet, or the dreamer of dreams: for the LORD your God proveth you, to know whether ye love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul. Ye shall walk after the LORD your God, and fear him, and keep his commandments, and obey his voice, and ye shall serve him, and cleave unto him." (Deut. 13:1-5) It is interesting to note that about six weeks after Joseph Smith had preached this sermon (in April 1844), that men will and can become gods and that God was not God from all eternity, Joseph was killed!! Coincidence?? (Orthodox Jews have a saying: "Coincidence is not a kosher word!")

The Bible tells that God is God "from everlasting to everlasting" (Ps. 90:2) "For unto us a child is born, unto us the son is given:.. and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, " (Is. 9:6) To the followers of Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and today's LDS prophets, we would like to say, as Joshua said to Israel: "...choose you this day whom ye will serve... but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD." (Joshua 24:15)

In the English Bible (KJV), whenever the word LORD is in all capital letters, in Hebrew it is a name of God, represented by consonants JHWH (Hebrews didn't dare to pronounce it) and it is translated both LORD or GOD. When God spoke to Moses, He declared Himself to be God, the Great I AM, and He told that by His name JHWH (JE-HO-VAH) he was not known to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. This was the first time that He revealed His name (Exodus 6:3).

Throughout the Bible, the words "I AM THE LORD YOUR GOD" (i.e., Ex. 6:7) or "I THE LORD GOD" are used by God to tell the prophet who is speaking. The word LORD (JHWH) and the word GOD (ELOHYIM) (Eloheim) are used as in the example above: I, THE LORD GOD, (not we, like Mormon doctrine teaches). Speaking of the Godhead, "Mormon Doctrine," page 576, says: "...As each of these persons is a God, it is evident, from this standpoint alone, that a plurality of Gods exists." In Hebrew, the word EL means God, word Eloheim is plural form of the word (similarly, the word Cherub is singular and the word Cherubim is plural). When we read in our English Bible: "I AM the LORD your GOD," if we put it back into Hebrew, it would read: "I am JHWH your Eloheim." One doesn't get two gods from it - but only one God. Trinity is not mentioned in the Bible as a word, but plurality of persons in ONE GOD is clearly demonstrated throughout the Bible. The Bible came to us through Israel. To the Jew there is but one God, JHWH. Deut. 6:4 is what Jews repeat daily and with their dying breath say: "Hear, O Israel, LORD our GOD is one LORD" or in Hebrew: "Hear, O Israel, JHWH our Eloheim is JHWH." Most people agree that Father is God. The Bible teaches that Jesus is God (i.e., John 1:1, 14; 20:28), and that Holy Ghost is God (comp. Acts 5:3 and 4, and 1 Cor. 3:17 with 6:19), but the Bible also teaches that THERE IS ONLY ONE GOD. In Is. 45, verses 5, 6, 14, 18, 21, 22, God says that there is no other God or Lord. Other examples: Deut. 4:35 and 39; 32:39; I Sam. 2:2; II Sam. 7:22; 22:32, I Kings 8:60; Ps. 18:31; Jer. 10:10; Gal. 3:20; Eph. 4:6; Mark 12:32 and 34. In James 2:19, it tells that even demons know that there is only one God. Why is it that the LDS Church doesn't know that? The LDS Church often says that there is more than one god, because God, in Gen. 1:26, says: "And God said, let us make man in our image..." Note that there is only one image, and the next verse clears it by saying: "So God created man in HIS own image... in the image f God created HE them: (Not WE!) The word Eloheim (GOD) refers to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, but the verb is in the singular in every case where plural form Eloheim appears. Examples of what God says about Himself: "I, the Lord God" (I JHWH Eloheim), not "we", (JHWH and Eloheim).

Since the Bible declares itself as being God's word, it doesn't "argue" about God. The Bible clearly tells that His ways and thoughts are far above our thoughts, but that through the Holy Spirit we will learn to understand what He has done for us and how great His love is towards us. God has given us a simple way, one way, narrow way. Let no one confuse you of that. Jesus said: "I am the way, the truth and the life." He said, in John 17:3: "...this is eternal life to know thee the only true God and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent." Just because you may have believed previously false teachings of the LDS Church, it doesn't mean that you cannot now accept the truth from God's Word, the Bible.

Another answer

The Bible is a wonderful "Testament" of who He is, and I certainly have no qualms with that. But you have to understand … man is not perfect like Christ is. Did the prophets of the Old Testament make mistakes? In fact yes, there are many documented examples. Therefore my friend, if you take a very critical look backwards, approximately 6000 years, does it make sense that from then until now records kept by men might have a few mistakes in them? Do you think that possibly some of the record keepers might have inserted a few phrases or deleted a word here and there, however innocently or not? How many times have these records been translated from one language to another beginning with the language that Adam spoke?

It is not my purpose to bash about the Bible, I love it! But I am also cognizant of the realities of where it came from and how it came to be today. One impartial authority is quoted addressing this phenomenon saying, "Jesus obviously did not speak the Old English of the King James Version - neither was the Bible originally recorded in English. Despite the sacred tradition that many revere of the KJV, it is merely a translation of the inspired Word of God, not the initial source. The Old Testament was authored in Hebrew and Aramaic, and the New Testament in Greek. While the original autographs no longer exist, translations are made from ancient manuscript copies, of which there are today at least 24,000, whole or in-part, with which to compare (Dale A. Robbins, 1995)."

Then what about the process where the Bible first became a group of canonized texts? The Jewish canon, commonly called the Tanakh or "Hebrew Bible "was canonization between approximately 200 BC and AD 200. The Torah was canonized c. 400 BC, the Prophets c. 200 BC, and the Writings c. AD 100. The first "Christian" canon recognized was collected by the Marcion of Sinope, at about 140 AD which included 10 epistles from Paul as well as parts of Luke. After Marcion, those who were allowed began to divide texts into those that aligned well with the canon or "measuring stick" of acceptedtheological thought. This was the major factor in finalizing the collection of works called the Bible. A well respected student of biblical history, Sir Fredrick Kenyon summated, "We now have to consider what happened to the text of ancient writings during the period when they were transmitted by hand­written copies; and in so doing we shall have to explain what is meant by the phrase various readings, which recurs frequently in the discussion of the text of the Bible, or indeed of any ancient book. No one can read our English Revised Versions intelligently without seeing that in very many places there is considerable doubt as to the exact words used by the original writers. On nearly every page, especially of the New Testament, we see notes in the margin to the effect that some ancient authorities read this, or many ancient authorities read that- these readings being alternatives to the readings actually adopted in the text of the Revisers. The question inevitably follows. What are these ancient authorities? How comes it that they differ so frequently among themselves? How do we, or how does anyone, know which to follow among these divergent witnesses (Sir F Kenyon, 1895)?"

The Roman Catholic Church dominated religious life in Western Europe during the bulk of the medieval period, and it tightly controlled the availability of the Holy Bible or the Vulgate. Wycliffe became deeply disillusioned both with Scholastic theology of his day and also with the state of the church, at least as represented by the clergy. In the final phase of his life in the years before his death in 1384 he increasingly argued for Scriptures as the authoritative center of Christianity, that the claims of the papacy were unhistorical, that monasticism was irredeemably corrupt. The first to oppose his theses were monks of those orders that held possessions, to whom his theories were dangerous. Around 100 years later, Tyndale, another champion of translating the scriptures into English did his best to translate the Bible. Although the King James Version is the hallmark of English Bibles, it is in reality a revision of earlier English translations. About 92 percent of Tyndale has survived in the King James Version. And Tyndale borrowed much from Wycliffe.

The oldest copies of the New Testament known to exist today are: The Codex Alexandrius and the Codex Sinaiticus in the British Museum Library in London, and the Codex Vaticanus in the Vatican. They date back to approximately the 300's AD. In 382 AD Jerome translated the New Testament from its original Greek into Latin. He put a note next to the Apocrypha Books, stating that he did not know whether or not they were inspired scripture, or just Jewish historical writings which accompanied the Old Testament.

Through the middle ages the keeper of the scriptures was the Catholic monks. What happened to translation and interpretation during this time of about 1000 years? One historian described the middle ages and scriptural stewardship this way, "By 500 AD the Bible had been translated into over 500 languages. Just one century later, by 600 AD, it has been restricted to only one language: the Latin Vulgate! The only organized and recognized church at that time in history was the Catholic Church of Rome, and they refused to allow the scripture to be available in any language other than Latin. Those in possession of non-Latin scriptures would be executed! This was because only the priests were educated to understand Latin, and this gave the church ultimate power … a power to rule without question n… a power to deceive … a power to extort money from the masses. Nobody could question their Biblical teachings, because few people other than priests could read Latin. The church capitalized on this forced-ignorance through the 1,000 year period from 400 AD to 1,400 AD knows as the Dark and Middle Ages (English Bible History)."

Please, my intention is not to offend. My friend, thinking that from all of this chaos and through thousands of years of it there could be a pure, unadulterated canon of prophesy and revelation, without error or flaw that we call the Bible today. If that were true there would be one church only, oneinterpretation and God would be everyone's God. But you just denied that to me, didn't you? The notion is ridiculous and those who think this way must become educated cognitively and spiritually. Ponder and open your heart, I bid you a very good day.

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Another answer

I don't dispute that God's word has been misinterpreted over the past 6000 years I just don't want people who seriously ask this question as to what book the Mormon's follow to be mislead by long-winded answers. The point is that Mormons pick and choose what part of the KJV to follow, so they don't actually follow it, they follow the version that Joseph Smith told the world in 1820 (with a few major changes since then - I don't see a problem with this, too each their own) . Here is the back story for those who would like to be informed:

Joseph Smith claimed he had a visit from God the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ, in 1820. He said that they told him that all churches were wrong and were an abomination to God and that he should not join any of them. He said that when he told his community about God's visit, that it initiated his fierce persecution. Later he said that he received visits from the angel Moroni, who Joseph Smith said was a resurrected being who had died close to Smith's area in New York state about 1400 years earlier. Moroni, Joseph Smith asserted, had buried in New York in the Hill Cumorah (to this day nobody knows where Hill of Cumorah is though) a record of his people who had lived on the American continent from about 600 B.C. to about 421 A.D. That record, Joseph Smith was told, would be given to him to translate. Then, a few years later Joseph Smith said that he received the record, written on gold plates in "reformed Egyptian" language that no one but he could understand. He was also told not to show these gold plates to anyone, but that some time later a few selected people would be given the privilege to view them. He said that he then looked into his hat with the plate at the bottom and translated the plates and published the material as the "Book of Mormon" and gave the gold plates back to the angel Moroni.

I'm not saying that either the book of Mormon or the Bible is correct, I only deal in facts, If anyone would like to know more do a little research, there is lots of information floating around for those with an open mind

Answer 2

Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (commonly called the "Mormon" church) in English-speaking countries use the King James Version of The Bible. In nations speaking other languages, a Bible in the native lanugage is used.

You can read the King James Version of the Bible, as well as other books that Church members consider Scripture, at the "Related Link" below.

Answer 3

Mormon's use the King James Version, but also have the Book of Mormon, which they consider to be a second testament about the Savior.

Answer 4

They do in addition to the Book of Mormon.