Samuel H. Smith didn’t believe his older brother’s message. The restoration of Christianity; angelic visitations; new scripture? It all seemed a bit much. Joseph tried everything to convince Samuel, even by “appealing to the Holy Bible for the truth of the doctrines” he shared.1 But no matter how much he reasoned with his brother, Samuel wouldn’t budge. It wasn’t until he retreated to the privacy of a forest in prayer that Samuel decided to join his brother’s new church. In the end, the Bible didn’t convince him; it was a subjective spiritual experience.

In a way, Samuel’s conversion to Mormonism foreshadowed the relationship his new religion would develop with the Bible. As an authority, it was foundational but not final, and as a source of revelation, it was requisite but needed reinforcement. This perspective ran contrary to Christians in Smith’s day, who viewed the Bible as the greatest source of revelation. But as LDS scholar Terryl Givens observed, “Mormon thought demoted scripture to the status of stream rather than fountain.”2 The fountain, of course, was an open heaven through the mouth of a living prophet.

Still, it’s a mistake for traditional Christians to assume Latter-day Saints do not swim in a biblical stream. Three-fourths of LDS scripture is the Bible, which saturates the other texts with citations, allusions, and imitations. In content, it’s difficult not to find the Bible in Mormonism. LDS disagreement with the Christian community isn’t whether the Bible is important but why.

So, what is the Latter-day Saint view of the Bible?3 Before we can answer this question, we need to ask a more basic one: What is the Bible?

The Inspiration of the Bible

God delights to reveal himself in the “handywork” of his creation (Ps 19:1-6; cf. Rom 1:16-32) and in the “divers manners” he communicates (Heb 1:1; cf. Ps 19:7-14). Theologians call these general and special revelation, respectively. General, because it is available generally to all people across time and culture; special, because it is more comprehensive, concrete, and clear than natural forms of revelation. At the core of divine revelation is the Jesus Christ, the Word of God incarnate (John 1:1, 14; Heb 1:1-3). All general revelation was “created by him, and for him” (Col. 1:16), and all special revelation readies, reveals, and reminds us of Him (Luke 24:25-27, 44-49; John 5:39). Throughout centuries, Christians have recognized this message in the Bible, the word of God proclaimed by his Spirit, penned by inspired writers, and providentially preserved by Him who illuminates faithful reading in the hearts of believers.

The Bible is a library of books that collectively testify of God’s work to bring about redemption for His glory. The apostle Paul famously taught that “all scripture is given by inspiration of God” and every passage has the quality of being inspired or ‘God-breathed’ (2 Tim. 3:16). The OT is often self-consciously aware of its inspiration as a record of the very voice of God, i.e., “Thus saith the Lord.” The NT frequently draws upon the OT while recognizing its own content as being among “the other scriptures” (2 Pet. 3:16).

Early Christians esteemed the Bible as “a heavenly gift from the Godhead’s own being,” wrote one early church father.4 And they understood the saving function of scripture, the means by which God communicated His Son to the world. “[Christ] clothed Himself in our language,” wrote Ephrem the Syrian, “so that he might clothe us in His mode of life.”5 The Reformers assumed the Bible’s inspiration while elevating its authority above all creeds and institutions, which fostered in Protestants an attitude of deference toward the word of God. As Calvin wrote, “We owe to the Scripture the same reverence as we owe to God because it has proceeded from him alone.”6

For many traditional Christians today, inspiration means the Bible does not merely contain the word of God but is the word of God. As J. I. Packer articulated; “What Scripture says, God says; for, in a manner comparable only to the deeper mystery of the Incarnation, the Bible is both fully human and fully divine.”7 For this reason, the conservative view of inspiration affirms that the Bible in “all its parts, down to the very words of the original, were given by divine inspiration.”8

Joseph Smith was raised in a culture that largely believed in the inspiration of the Bible. It saturated their imagination, shaped their language, and molded their lives. Smith affirmed general revelation, teaching that all those of “common intellect” can gaze upward to see “the power of Omnipotence inscribed upon the heavens” (cf. Psalm 19:1).9 He also affirmed special revelation, believing all can “see [God’s] own hand-writing in the sacred volume.”10 Smith’s writings are saturated with biblical material, especially the earliest account of his First Vision. And throughout his life, his sermons incorporate the Bible far more often than the Book of Mormon. For Smith, the Bible was an inspired collection of God’s word and the foundation of LDS scripture.

Early Latter-day Saints were well-versed in the Bible and won converts from Protestantism primarily by arguing from their common holy text. One Protestant minister of Smith’s day remarked how impressed he was with the Mormons, “a people who read the Bible so much, and who could so readily quote any part of Scripture” that they put Protestants to shame.11 In my personal experience, I’ve found the same to be true of many Latter-day Saints today, who are grateful inheritors and students of this work of “divinely inspired authors.”12

So, Latter-day Saints and traditional Christians generally agree that the Bible is inspired, but they disagree about its sufficiency.

The Sufficiency of the Bible: A Christian Perspective

Is the Bible sufficient special revelation from God? Answering this question inevitably evokes the formation of the biblical canon. The Greek word kanon refers to a measuring stick that provides the standard for an ideal length. Christians use the term as a metaphor to describe the list of written scripture, a collection of sixty-six books; no more, no less. Early Christians adopted the Hebrew Bible while discerning the authenticity and recognizing the authority of the twenty-seven books of the NT by the late fourth century, although the majority of NT texts were accepted much earlier.13 But is the canon sufficient, and ought there be more added?

Many early church fathers affirmed the sufficiency of the Bible. Vincent of Lérens, for instance, was convinced that the biblical canon is “perfect and sufficient for all matters—indeed, more than sufficient.”14 The Reformers agreed and placed particular emphasis on the role of sufficiency in salvation. Even though the Bible does not address all topics, the “Holy Scripture contains all things necessary to salvation” clarifies the Anglican confession.15 Traditional Christians today echo this conviction. The incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ was God’s ultimate “Yes!” to every divine promise (2 Cor. 1:20), and the church must now live in light of the gospel, as proclaimed in the OT and NT, until the Son’s return. The Bible is not exhaustive in scope but extensive enough as the deposit of God’s full gospel. Nothing ought to be taken away, and neither should anything be added.

Furthermore, the Bible is accurate even after centuries of transmission through the hands of countless scribes. The Psalmist thanked God for his word and that he had “founded them for ever” (Ps 119:152). Peter likewise believed that “the word of God” would “liveth and abideth for ever” (1 Pet. 1:23). All other things come and go, he said, “but the word of the Lord endureth for ever” (1 Pet. 1:24). Available manuscript evidence today generally affirms the hopes of these writers millennia ago. The rediscovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS) in the mid-twentieth century testifies to the remarkable stability of OT preservation. Despite variations between the DSS and other OT manuscripts, none represent a serious departure or sectarian slant from the Bible. This observation led one scholar to affirm that the DSS “are the oldest and most authentic witnesses to the ancient text of the Hebrew Bible.”16 And despite the thousands of variants found among the NT manuscripts, scholars find that only a minuscule percentage are meaningful and viable, and these are attested to in most modern translations.17

The Bible, then, is not only a sufficient source of the gospel but also a faithful one. Traditional Christians believe that “the books of Scripture firmly, faithfully, and without error teach that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided to the Sacred Scriptures.”18 And while God’s revelation was progressive, that season has ended so as to warrant the rejection of “any normative revelation [that] has been given since the completion of the New Testament writings.”19

The Sufficiency of the Bible: An Early LDS Perspective

Joseph Smith was prepared for a skeptical reception of the Book of Mormon when he published it. The text itself told him what to expect. ‘Gentile fools’ would turn their nose up at it, retorting: “A Bible! A Bible! We have got a Bible, and there cannot be any more Bible” (2 Nephi 29:3). The author questions why Christians would not receive more word from God (2 Nephi 29:8), and finds the answer in disbelief. “Ye need not suppose that it [the Bible] contains all my words,” cautions God in the text,” neither need ye suppose that I have not caused more to be written” (2 Nephi 29:10). In other words, the Book of Mormon would be rejected because Christians wouldn’t accept a re-opened canon. Of course, such an argument for the Book of Mormon is necessary; without it the text loses its purpose as scripture. If the Bible is genuinely sufficient, then the Book of Mormon—and modern prophecy and other LDS scriptures—are unwarranted canonical excess.

The issue of biblical transmission also bothered Smith, as it did his contemporaries. While many people believed in the Bible’s inspiration, European higher criticism began proliferating America, which caused the young nation to question the reliability of its most sacred book. They wondered how the English Bible could be trusted if fallible or unscrupulous men controlled the translation process, let alone the degraded and corrupted state of biblical manuscripts (discoveries like the DSS were decades away). Smith held a popular opinion that the original documents were inspired, but textual variations among manuscripts—the result of “careless transcribers, or designing and corrupt priests”—were evidence enough to reject the notion that contemporary Bibles were a faithful representation of the originals.20 LDS apostle Orson Pratt reflected this sentiment that biblical manuscripts had been so “mutilated, changed, and corrupted,” he wondered if anyone could be sure “that even one verse of the whole Bible has escaped pollution, so as to convey the same sense now that it did in the original?”21

Still, the Bible was essential for Mormons; it was inspired but inadequate by itself. A self-stated mission of the Book of Mormon is to “establish the truth of” the Bible (1 Nephi 13:40). Early LDS missionaries were frequently asked whether they believed it. “If we do,” they replied, “we are the only people under heaven that does. For there are none of the religious sects of the day that do.”22 In this sense, Latter-day Saints thought of themselves as more biblical than Protestants precisely because their movement sought to restore and reveal the “plain and precious parts” of the Bible they believed had been stripped out by an abominable church (1 Nephi 13:26–29, 32, 34). They weren’t rejecting the Bible; instead, they were restoring it. Through no fault of its own, the Bible could only offer a blurry vision for faith and practice, which explained to them why denominations disagreed at so many theological junctures. For these reasons, Smith taught that his church believed “the bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly.”23

But from his prophetic vantage point, Smith thought that any attempt to produce a correct translation was impossible because of corrupted manuscripts. As he explained rather bluntly, there were “many things in the bible which do not, as they now stand, accord with the revelation of the Holy Ghost to me.”24 Only divine intervention could remedy the problem.

As early as 1830, Smith began working on a new translation for his church, although the scene was quite unlike actual translation. Smith was untrained in biblical languages and did not appear to have consulted linguistic tools available to him at the time. Instead, he revised a King James Version according to his decisions and revelations. As one LDS scholar explained, Smith’s view “was not so much that his revelations needed to be tailored absolutely to biblical data but, rather, that an imperfect Bible ought to be conformed to his more current and direct revelations.”25 The Bible must conform to Smith, not the other way around because “I have [the] Key by which I understand the scripture,” he claimed.26 Consequently, as another LDS scholar pointed out, “Smith understood his Bible rereading as revelation from God that superseded as necessary the printed text.”27

Smith began his revision with the book of Genesis and concluded the bulk of his project by 1833, but he died without publishing his ‘new translation.’28 The manuscripts were delivered to the Reorganized church, which published the ‘Inspired Version’ in 1867, but the LDS Church has never seriously considered replacing the KJV. As a result, only portions from the book of Genesis and the Gospel of Matthew were canonized in LDS scripture, and those not until 1880.

In sum, early Latter-day Saints esteemed the Bible as an inspired text but viewed it as insufficient because its source material was corrupted and English translations lacked perspicuity. Joseph Smith attempted to rehabilitate the Bible, according to his revelatory standards, but never finished.

Today, the LDS Church has not veered far from its earliest perspective on the Bible, inspired but insufficient. It is nestled among the three other standard works of the LDS canon; the Book of Mormon, Doctrine & Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price. The LDS Church officially recognizes the KJV but not to the extent that it rejects other quality translations. LDS leaders encourage their members to study the Bible, especially when a four-year rotation through their scriptures focuses on the OT and NT. Latter-day Saints read the Bible in light of LDS scripture, aided by interpretations from church leadership and personal discernment.

In the end, the greatest difference between traditional Christian and LDS views on the Bible orbits its nature. Is the Bible a sufficient source of special revelation, or does it need supplementing by an expanded canon? Of course, Latter-day Saints have long believed in a need for additional scripture. But for most Christians, supplemental revelation is suspect at best and undermines their tradition at worst. For conservative Protestants, the denial of the Bible’s sufficiency is tantamount to rejecting sola scriptura because the “authority of Scripture is inescapably impaired [if] total divine inerrancy is in any way limited or disregarded.”29 Worse yet, to tamper with the word of God is to jeopardize the gospel. They read the spirit of Christ’s warning in the book of Revelation against addition or subtraction across the entire canon. If what God has said is “faithful and true” (Rev. 22:6), then any revision to His words is deceit, and to “maketh a lie” (Rev. 22:15) prohibits one’s entry into the renewed kingdom of God. The warning, then, is “against the spurious revelations that circulated through false teachers and false prophets in the name of the apostles,” argued evangelical scholar Robert Thomas, which nullifies any other prophecies that may arise afterwards, e.g., Jezebel (2:20).30