Question of Scriptural Innerancy

Volume Four—Chapter Nine THE QUESTION OF SCRIPTURAL INERRANCY

For Evangelicals, the truthfulness, authority, relevance, and adequacy of the entire Bible are central and absolute to their theological views.

#Are Scriptures Innerant?

Evangelical view. Evangelical scholars do not believe biblical scripture came about by literal divine dictation. Nor do they believe, when pressed, that God micromanaged the entire process of translating and copying the biblical manuscripts over the centuries so that every copy after the original was inerrant. They believe, however, God somehow generally superintended the process so as to guarantee and validate both the content and accuracy of the scripture. They also believe early Greek editions of the New Testament and Hebrew and Aramaic editions of the Old Testament are very close to what the original authors actually wrote.

Evangelicals use the term inerrant to describe their concept of the Bible. Other common terms include:

1. infallibility—the inability of scriptures to deceive anyone.

2. verbal—The process of inspiration extends to the actual words of the Bible, not just the thoughts and concepts embraced in them. In other words, they believe scriptures are “verbal” or “verbally inspired.” God gives to the prophet the words, and not just the thoughts.

While we may differentiate revelation—the God-inspired thoughts received by a prophet or other person—from scripture—the writing down of those inspired thoughts, Evangelicals would include the process of writing them down in the concept of revelation.

A few Evangelicals whom we might call liberal or “neo-orthodox” differentiate between the receiving of revelation and writing it down. These would acknowledge the possibility of human mistakes resulting in errors in the scripture.

3. plenary—The word plenary means “full, complete, and absolute.” Hence the term as used here refers to the fact that all sixty-six books in all their parts are inspired.

Evangelicals favor more recent Bible translations than the King James Version such as the New International Version (NIV), the New American Standard Bible, or the New Revised Standard Version.

For support of the idea of inerrancy, Protestants often refer to 2 Timothy 3:16-17: “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works.” The phrase “given by inspiration of God” may be alternatively translated as “God breathed.” The scriptures are the breath of God, and therefore, the Evangelicals conclude, they must be inerrant.

LDS view. We should acknowledge we have no axe to grind with Evangelicals regarding the general truth and value of the Bible. We believe the Bible is a rich source of spiritual truths. We accept it as a holy book of scripture. We treasure it. We recommend it for both individual and group study by members of the Church. The curriculum of our Sunday School and Seminary systems specifies that half of our course work is spent in studying the Old and New Testaments. We do not, however, believe the Bible is inerrant. We should probably note also that inerrant, verbal, and plenary are not words found in the Bible. Infallible is found once (Acts 1:3) but it does not refer to scripture.

Let us examine a few of the reasons we LDS might cite against the proposition that the Bible is inerrant.

#The Historical Argument—Inerrancy Is a Relatively Recent Doctrine

The doctrine of inerrancy among Evangelicals is a late innovation that originated primarily from the Princeton theologians in the late nineteenth century. One could cite the works of Archibald Alexander, Charles Hodge, A. A. Hodge, and B. B. Warfield (for example, see Charles F. Hodge’s, “Inspiration,” Presbyterian Review, 1881, 42).

The doctrine of inerrancy received a further re-statement and update in the fall of 1978. An interdenominational joint conference was attended by hundreds of evangelical scholars and leaders at the Hyatt Regency O’Hare Hotel in Chicago. Its purpose was to defend biblical inerrancy against the continuing trend toward liberal and neo-orthodox conceptions of scripture. The statement which came out of that conference is often referred to as the “Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy.” It was signed by nearly 300 noted evangelical scholars. A succinct summary of that ten-page declaration is: “Inerrancy means that when all facts are known, the Scriptures in their original autographs and properly interpreted will be shown to be wholly true in everything that they affirm, whether that has to do with doctrine or morality, or with the social, physical, or life sciences” (published, for example, in Inerrancy, ed. Norman L. Geisler, 493-502).

We would point out that throughout the centuries the Protestant churches believed in the Bible’s authority but not its total inerrancy. The doctrine of inerrancy grew out of an apologetic need. Liberal Protestantism and its growing tendency for increasingly radical biblical criticism rendered the orthodox view of scripture vulnerable. Therefore, the Princeton theologians devised the doctrine of total inerrancy to stem the rising tide of liberalism. This represented a departure from the views of the Reformers and other predecessors in the orthodox tradition. Thus, the doctrine of inerrancy seems a relatively recent “quick fix” intended to counter the possibly divisive views of liberal Protestants.

#Difficulties with Biblical Interpretation (Hermeneutics) and Transmission

God reveals to his prophets divinely inspired thoughts. These thoughts are “immediate” revelation. That is, as they exist in the prophet’s mind, they are pure and free of any mediating or altering influence. Immediate revelations are divine. Human languages and cultures, however, are not. The specifics of language, style, and vocabulary are conditioned by the capacities, education, cultural context, time, and place of the prophet writer to whom God speaks. These are all potentially mediating influences that may bias or otherwise alter the immediate revelation as it is written. The written record is not “immediate” revelation. Rather it is “mediate” revelation. D&C 1:24 states: “Behold, I am God and have spoken it; these commandments are of me, and were given unto my servants in their weakness, after the manner of their language, that they might come to understanding (cf. 1 Corinthians 1:27).”

The words used in writing scripture are not God’s words. They are largely the prophet’s words. The prophet’s words may provide a version of God’s immediate revelation that is completely correct. The prophet may accurately represent the meaning God intends. But the possibility also exists that he may not. In our view, scripture, including the Book of Mormon, is recorded by men who can and do make mistakes. Inevitably their biases and shortcomings are included in the scriptures they write down.

As scripture is transmitted over time by scribes, translators, redactors, editors, and copyists, it is possible to mistranslate, misinterpret, or mis-copy the Hebrew, Greek, and Nephite texts. The immediate revelation itself may not have been at fault. However, it is vulnerable to human error during the process of transmission. All these process have certainly taken their toll on the written word of God. Human errors have surely resulted from these processes over time.

The original revelations in the Bible might have been “inerrant,” or nearly so, as given to and even written by the original apostles or prophets. We freely acknowledge this. Though the autograph (original manuscript) is usually correct, God does not prevent the prophet from using his own words. These might err, even in the autograph. Book of Mormon prophets frequently acknowledge that their writings might contain errors. The Title Page of the Book of Mormon states: “And now, if there are faults, they are the mistakes of men.”

The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy places a condition on our ability to interpret the Bible. It says that it can only be interpreted correctly “when all facts are known.” The problem is that all facts (cultural, linguistic, psychological, educational, settings, yearnings) are not known. They cannot be known. The autographs, their exact historical and cultural contexts, and the precise linguistic intentions and abilities of their authors are not available to us. In short, we do not possess all the data bearing on the recording of the Bible. Some of that data may be lost forever. They may be awaiting discovery by archaeologists. By claiming that inerrancy will be intact only after all the facts are known, one must acknowledge our present lack of knowledge. The defender of inerrancy argues only that in the end there will be no conflict between the truth and the biblical text. But the end is not visible from here. Here and now, it is not possible to confirm inerrancy.

In our view the councils held in Nicaea (AD 325), Constantinople (AD 381), and Chalcedon (AD 451) imposed unwarranted, unauthorized, and non-biblical biases and concepts. We feel these biases have resulted in the Protestants’ misinterpreting many aspects of the Bible. It is difficult to defend inerrancy when there is no control over interpretation.

We must therefore firmly maintain that the text of all versions of our present-day Bible versions most assuredly contain errors and omissions. No present manuscript or copy of scripture can be called inerrant. Robinson writes:

The eighth Article of Faith, written by Joseph Smith in 1842, states

that “we believe the Bible to be the word of God, as far as it is translated correctly; we also believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God.” Evangelicals sometimes take offense at the phrase, “as far as it is translated correctly,” but this should not be so. The wording is intended to communicate exactly the same caution to Latter-day Saints that the phrases “when all facts are known,” “in their original autographs,” and “properly interpreted” from the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy are intended to convey to Evangelicals. By setting these very similar parameters, both Latter-day Saints and Evangelicals stipulate that the present text of scripture may contain errors, and neither Mormons nor (most) Evangelicals would insist that any modern version can claim

absolute verbal inerrancy (HWD, 56).

Even though our eighth Article of Faith does not apply the same qualification to the Book of Mormon (it states, “we also believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God”), we also believe that the Book of Mormon is not a perfect translation. It is not free of errors.

The Evangelicals’ idea of inerrancy applies to the Bible as it was originally written, to the original autographs. Since they no longer exist, this means the doctrine of inerrancy is meaningless. We might even regard this statement as a convenient hedge against disproof. Whenever an “error” is pointed out, the Evangelical can say that it must not have existed in the original autographs.

The Evangelicals may distinguish between “errors” and “falsity” in the scripture. Inerrancy, in their view seems to lie in the Bible’s being consistently “true,” though perhaps not free of error. “Truth,” they maintain, is a property of sentences or verses and not words. They may acknowledge errors, but eschew the idea of falsity, claiming that inerrancy mainly applies to the Bible in the fact that it is consistently “true.” It is difficult to see how errors, regardless of the way they are defined, would not enhance the existing ambiguity in the Bible. Sometimes, the meaning of a verse hangs on the interpretation of a single word. We need not debate the obvious ambiguities in the Bible. The wide variety of Christian doctrinal interpretations of the Bible and the vast number of Protestant denominations offer sufficient evidence. Does the idea of inerrancy of the Bible extend to all of its details or not?

In discussions of scriptural inerrancy, the phrase “propositional truth” often arises. Propositional truth refers to informational truths, or facts as they really exist in the universe. Propositional truths are logical, demonstrable, and absolute. We acknowledge the thoughts held in the mind of a prophet, because God put them there, as being valid propositional truths. For all of the reasons discussed, some ostensible “propositional truths” in the Bible are incomplete, ambiguously stated, or just plain wrong. While Evangelicals insist that God took care to ensure that scriptural writers conveyed the divinely implanted propositions accurately, we cannot agree.

One example of an error in the Bible may be found in Matthew 13:30. It reads, “Let both [the wheat and the tares] grow together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn.” Here in Matthew the focus is on the burning of the wicked. However, in this verse of section 86 of the Doctrine and Covenants, the order of events in the parable is reversed. That is, the wheat is gathered first. Then the tares are bound and burned. Hence, the parable is brought into conformity with other scriptures, and the focus is changed from the burning of the wicked to the gathering of the righteous of Israel (see Matthews, “Plainer Translation,” Joseph Smith’s Translation of the Bible, a History and Commentary. 82).

Sometimes a wrong word may be written, or a word so written as to convey a false meaning. For example the accidental absence of a dot converts the Aramaic sign for rope into camel. Therefore we have long wrestled with the meaning of the Biblical statement, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.” When the missing dot is re-instituted, Christ’s meaningful metaphor becomes, “It is easier for a rope to go through the eye of a needle” (Matthew 19:24). Likewise, the statement, “Let the dead bury the dead” (Luke 9:60) has been perplexing. The Aramaic word for dead is metta and for town, matta. It becomes likely, therefore, that the true saying was, “Let the town bury the dead,” a very common practice in the days of Christ (George M. Lamsa, Gospel Light). There is a minor error in Joel 2:24: “And the fats shall overflow with wine and oil.” The Hebrew text reads: “the vats shall overflow with wine and oil.” Another example, verse five of the eighth Psalm, was incorrectly rendered by the King James translators “For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels.” The Hebrew text reads, “thou hast made him a little lower than the gods,” (the word elohim is used which means gods). The Prophet Joseph Smith declared: “I believe the Bible as it read when it came from the pen of the original writers. Ignorant translators, careless transcribers, or designing and corrupt priests have committed many errors” (TPJS, 327).

What is needed to aid in proper biblical interpretation is a second or third independent source of divine revelation. This we have in the Book of Mormon, the Pearl of Great Price, and the Doctrine and Covenants. None of these “modern” scriptures contradicts the Bible. They are indispensable for accurate and consistent biblical interpretation.

#Science and the Bible

Modern science has rendered the biblical creation story untenable. We must either acknowledge the biblical account as purely figurative, or we must conclude that either the Bible or science is wrong. Most scientists have no universal agenda to disprove the Bible, even though we often cast them in that light. They only want to discover the truth and confirm it by scientific method. We must surely acknowledge their contributions as mostly valid. John Calvin taught that the Bible’s teaching does not need to be harmonized with science, implying the futility of successfully doing that. It is difficult, after all, to set all science aside when it seems to conflict with scripture.

#The JST and Pearl of Great Price

Evangelical view. Evangelicals see Joseph Smith’s inspired revision of the Bible (the “JST”) as strong evidence of our belief that our present text of the Bible contains many errors. After all, Joseph spent significant time revising it. Blomberg writes: “None of the ancient manuscripts support the contention that the type of ‘restorations’ that the JST (Joseph Smith’s translation) or the uniquely LDS Scriptures make were ever in the original biblical texts” (HWD, 36). Blomberg says also, “In every one of these passages, the JST significantly differed from the unanimous witness of the ancient manuscript evidence in favor of a version more in line with Mormon doctrine than historic Christianity” (Ibid., 51).

Knowledgeable Evangelicals even know about 1 Nephi 13:28-29 which indicates that there are “many plain and precious things taken away from the book,” meaning the Bible. They view the JST as Joseph’s efforts to restore the original message of the ancient text. Owen and Mosser write: “Text-critical studies have not, for the most part, tended to substantiate Smith’s proposed emendations” (FRB, 21).

Evangelicals are also concerned about our beliefs that the text of the Book of Abraham may not necessarily coincide with what was on the Egyptian papyri used by Joseph in the “translation” of the Book of Abraham. Blomberg writes, “Many Mormons are no longer claiming that [the Book of Abraham] is a literal translation of the papyri Joseph used, since Joseph Smith’s translation of the Book of Abraham facsimiles has been challenged by Egyptologists” (HWD, 51). Blomberg then cites as evidence the anti-Mormons H. Michael Marquardt and Franklin S. Spalding, neither of which is an Egyptologist.

LDS view. Speaking of the failure of the JST to coincide with ancient manuscripts, Hamblin and Peterson write:

All this would show, of course, is that the [biblical] texts we now have are faithful to the scattered manuscripts of the late second century and thereafter. It cannot demonstrate anything about the mid-first-century originals, because these are lost. And if it be replied that ours is an argument from silence, and, thus, less than definitive, it must be pointed out that so, too, is Blomberg’s. But our position is less vulnerable than his. For it is conceivable, however probable or improbable, that manuscripts might someday appear that support all or most of the JST. However, it is virtually inconceivable that we will ever know all of the manuscripts and manuscript variants that have ever existed. But it is only on the basis of such complete knowledge that we could ever definitively rule out the possibility of ancient support for Joseph Smith’s readings.

Furthermore, when Blomberg says, correctly, that “entire verses and chapters [in the JST] correspond to nothing in any ancient manuscript” (HWD, 51), this only counts against the Latter-day Saints if they are committed to the notion that the authority of the modern prophet Joseph Smith to make changes depends upon ancient texts. But Latter-

day Saints are not (and should not be) committed to that notion.

Still, Blomberg is simply uninformed here. John Tvedtnes has analyzed 265 variations between the King James Bible and the Book of Mormon, of which 89 (34%) have ancient textual support (“Isaiah Variants in the Book of Mormon,” 118). Likewise John W. Welch has provided interesting examples and arguments concerning the Book of Mormon version of the Sermon on the Mount (“The Sermon at the Temple and the Greek New Testament Manuscripts,” in The Sermon at the Temple and the Sermon on the Mount: A Latter-day Saint Approach, 145-63; and in Illuminating the Sermon at the Temple and the Sermon on the Mount, 199- 210; see also Welch’s “Approaching New Approaches,” Review of Books on the Book of Mormon, 145-68) (FRB, 190-91).

When Joseph Smith “translated” the Bible, it was apparently not his primary purpose to restore our present text to its original form. Joseph never did explain his “translation” process. The KJV text seemed have been only a “starting point.” The Spirit of revelation was always an additional source of information. The text suggested certain ideas, but the Spirit apparently suggested enlargements, backgrounds, alternate readings, prophetic commentaries, clarifications, occasional corrections of the original, and additional concepts not found on the page. We do believe what he wrote was true. It is what the Church needs in these latter days. We believe that the JST is true in all of its doctrinal particulars. Joseph made all his emendations by divine inspiration. We consult the JST as a supplement to our canonical scriptures. Thus, the term “translation,” when referring to Joseph Smith’s translation of the Bible, differs from that normally used when one thinks of translating languages. It seems that some of the JST is a restoration of ancient text, but most of it is not.

Non-LDS people often mistakenly think that the JST is the LDS version of the Bible. The King James Version is and always has been our version of the Bible (in the English-speaking countries). The existence of the JST does not imply that we believe that the Bible is incorrect. Believing what is written in the JST does not nullify our belief in the KJV, Old or New Testaments, and their power in our lives.

The progressive, open-ended process used in Joseph’s “translating” the Bible gives us an instructive clue in understanding Joseph Smith’s “translation” of the Egyptian papyrus from whence came the Book of Abraham. It may not have been a literal translation at all, and the Book of Abraham may go far beyond what was actually written on the papyri.

Addressing the issue of the Egyptian papyri from which Joseph “translated” the Book of Abraham, Robinson writes:

Joseph Smith never explained how he was “translating” the Book of Abraham in the Pearl of Great Price, and I do not claim to know the relationship between Joseph’s Egyptian papyri and the finished text. I do believe that the finished text is true. It is the inspired word of God, and is historically correct and authentic, but I do not know how Joseph arrived at it other than that it was “by the gift and power of God.” Many critics claim that if they can demonstrate that Joseph was not translating directly from the papyrus in the same way and getting the same English product that an Egyptologist would, then the finished Book of Abraham is discredited. But the Church has never been bound to defend the proposition that Joseph did what an Egyptologist does to get his finished text—only that the finished text is true (HWD, 65).

Was Joseph’s “Expansionist” Approach in “Translating” the Bible Used Also During his Translation of the Book of Mormon?

Evangelical view. Owen and Mosser claim our view of Joseph Smith’s “translation” of the Bible (JST) is methodologically inconsistent with our rejection of an expansionist view of the Book of Mormon (FRB, 23). In other words, they reason if Joseph Smith had the inclination to expand on the King James Bible, then why would he not have used “expansions” in his translating of the Book of Mormon.

LDS view. Unlike the case of the JST, Joseph Smith translated from an actual text in the case of the Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon was translated strictly. There is nothing (even methodologically) inconsistent in our assertion.

The process of translating the Book of Mormon was quite different from the production of the JST. The textual content of the Book of Mormon was all contained on the plates of Mormon and the small plates of Nephi. While, necessarily, some of Joseph’s vocabulary was included in the Book of Mormon text, he did not add content as he translated.1

#“Plain and Precious Things” Missing from the Bible

Evangelical view. The Book of Mormon clearly teaches that many “plain and precious things” are missing from our current Bible (1 Nephi 13:28-29). Blomberg writes, “We marvel at the extent of the agreement among the thousands of manuscripts that have been preserved, particularly in the Greek, and we believe that we have, in the critical Greek editions of the New Testament and the Hebrew and Aramaic editions of the Old Testament, extremely close replicas of what the original authors actually wrote” (HWD, 38).

LDS view. We have no reason to think the process of removing “plain and precious truths” from the Bible involved a systematic editing of the present books of the canon. Robinson writes:

It is clear to me . . . that “the plain and precious truths” were not necessarily in the originals of the present biblical books, and I suspect that the editing process that excised them did not consist solely or even primarily of cutting and pasting the present books, but rather largely in keeping other apostolic or prophetic writings from being included in the canon. For example, Paul’s other epistles or the genuine book of Enoch cited by Jude as a prophetic work (Jude 14-15), and which is not in my opinion found among the extant Enoch material. In other words, “the plain and precious truths” were primarily excised not by means of controlling the text, but by means of controlling the canon. I think that informed Latterday Saints will affirm with me that the present books of the Bible are the Word of God (within the common parameters of the eighth article of faith and the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy) and that the texts are essentially correct in their present form—but that there once were other “God-breathed” writings that are now missing.

Certainly Paul thought his letter to the Laodiceans worthy of circulation in the church even if later compilers did not (Colossians 4:16). I would dearly love a peek at the real first epistle to the Corinthians (cf. 1 Corinthians 5:9). Luke describes “many accounts” of the story of Jesus written in the first century according to eyewitness testimony—even though of the present Gospels he could only have known Mark[’s]. Where are the others? Most “orthodox” Christians extend their faith in inspired authorship of the biblical books to include faith in inspired editorship of both text and canon in later centuries—a biblically unwarranted leap (HWD, 63 and notes 21, 22)).

Blomberg doubts we lack any important, inspired texts from antiquity. He writes, “There is not a shred of historical evidence from the ancient world that the suppression of such literature ever took place” (HWD, 49). “Neither,” continues Blomberg, “do any ancient manuscripts exist to support the claim that the early church left out entire books from the Bible that would have included distinctively LDS doctrine” (Ibid., 36).

Hamblin and Peterson respond:

But, of course, if a text has been successfully suppressed, one would expect evidence for it to be difficult, if not impossible, to find. When one considers the number of important literary texts from the ancient world that have disappeared leaving no trace behind them but their titles— treasured texts of Aristotle and Sophocles and the like, texts which were never suppressed but have nonetheless vanished—one is surprised that anything survives at all. And we have no way of knowing how many texts have disappeared leaving no trace at all. . . .

In order to make his criticism coherent, Blomberg needs to provide specific examples of the “distinctively LDS doctrine” he claims cannot be found in early Christian writings. Since he fails to do so, his criticism remains pure assertion. Moreover, in dealing with this issue it is centrally important to mention that most Jewish and Christian writings of the early centuries after Christ are simply lost. To claim that such lost documents did or did not include “distinctively LDS doctrine” is impossible (or, alternatively, very easy) because we simply do not know what they contained.

Nonetheless, even in the surviving corpus of early Christian literature, there is extraordinarily rich evidence of early Christian beliefs that parallel “distinctively LDS” doctrines such as: human deification,2 an anthropomorphic deity,3 creation from existing matter rather than ex nihilo

and the premortal existence of the soul, the central importance of the prophet Enoch,5 such “distinctively LDS” practices as baptism for the dead,6 and what might be termed Christian mystery rituals,7 (FRB, 191-92, formatting and some punctuation changed).

In response to Blomberg’s assertion that we have Greek New Testament editions and Aramaic Old Testament editions that represent “extremely close replicas of what the original authors actually wrote,” Hamblin and Peterson observed, “Unfortunately . . . this seems to be more a restatement of an article of evangelical faith than an accurate summary of the current state of the textual criticism of the Bible, which reveals quite a different picture” (FRB, 193). Hamblin and Peterson have written a compelling essay on the myriad significant and complex variations in the several known ancient Old

Testament texts (Septuagint, Masoretic, Targums, Samaritan, Vulgate, and several Qumran texts). Even these several biblical traditions have fragmented, and today there are almost unlimited numbers of known Old Testament texts, and no two agree in all of their details. The same is true of the ancient New Testament texts. There exist literally thousands of ancient Greek New Testament texts, and, again, no two are just alike. Scholars outside the LDS Church found the changes in the ancient texts to be “a mixture of accidental carelessness, deliberate scribal corrections, involuntary mistakes, a translator’s conscious departure from literalness, a reviser’s more systematic alterations, and, not least, contamination caused by harmonizing to an extent which varied in strength from place to place. All these things contributed to diversification of the text, to giving it, if one may so put it, a little of the local colour of each country” (Leon Vaganay and Christian-Bernard Amphoux, An Introduction to New Testament Criticism, 2nd ed., 105-6). The interested reader is invited to review the details of Hamblin and Peterson’s excellent essay (FRB, 193-201).

#Summary

Nephi wrote a specific warning to the people of this latter day and perhaps especially to the Evangelicals:

Thou fool, that shall say: A Bible, we have got a Bible, and we need no more Bible. . . . Wherefore murmur ye, because that ye shall receive more of my word? Know ye not that the testimony of two nations is a witness unto you that I am God, that I remember one nation like unto another? Wherefore, I speak the same words unto one nation like unto another. And when the two nations shall run together the testimony of the two nations shall run together also. And I do this that I may prove unto many that I am the same yesterday, today, and forever; and that I speak forth my words according to mine own pleasure. And because that I have spoken one word ye need not suppose that I cannot speak another; for my work is not yet finished; neither shall it be until the end of man, neither from that time henceforth and forever” (2 Nephi 29:6, 8-9).

In the justice of God, no person is expected to accept a truth unless it has been properly established. One condition for this proper establishment is that the truth satisfies the law of witnesses. This law simply stated is: “In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established” (1 Corinthians 13:1; see also Matthew 18:16; D&C 6:28, 30; 128:3). It is a simple spiritual truth that the Bible and the Book of Mormon function together today to satisfy the law of witnesses.

1 See Royal Skousen, “How Joseph Smith Translated the Book of Mormon: Evidence from the Original Manuscript,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies volume 7, number 1 (1998): 23-31; see also “The ‘Expanded’ Book of Mormon?” in The Book of Mormon:

Second Nephi, The Doctrinal Structure, ed. Monte S. Nyman and Charles D. Tate Jr. (Provo, Utah: BYU Religious Studies Center, 1989), 413.

See, for example, Ernst W. Benz, “Imago Dei: Man in the Image of God,” in Reflections on Mormonism: Judaeo-Christian Parallels, ed. Truman G. Madsen (Provo, Utah: BYU Religious Studies Center, 1978), 201-21; Keith E. Norman, “Deification: The Content of Athanasian Soteriology” (Ph.D. dissertation, Duke University, 1980); Georgios I. Mantzaridis, The Deification of Man: Saint Gregory Palamas and Orthodox Tradition, trans. Liadain Sherrard (Crestwood, N. Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary, 1987); A. M. Allchin, Participation in God: A Forgotten Strand in Anglican Tradition (Wilton, Connecticut: Morehouse-Barlow, 1988); Stephen E. Robinson, Are Mormons Christians? (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1991), 60-65; and Peterson and Ricks, Offenders for a Word (Salt Lake City: Aspen Books, 1992), 75-92.

3 See Edmond LaB. Cherbonnier, “In defense of Anthropomorphism,” in Reflections on Mormonism, ed. Truman G. Madsen (Provo, Utah: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 1978), 155-73; David L. Paulsen, “Early Christian Belief in a Corporeal Deity: Origen and Augustine as Reluctant Witnesses,” Harvard Theological Review 83 (1990): 105-16; Peterson and Ricks, Offenders for a Word (Salt Lake City: Aspen Books, 1992) 74-75; David L. Paulsen, “The Doctrine of Divine Embodiment: Restoration, Judeo-Christian, and Philosophical Perspectives,” BYU Studies volume 35, number 4 (1995-96): 6-94, especially 41-79.

See Blake Ostler, “Clothed Upon: A Unique Aspect of Christian Antiquity,” BYU Studies volume 22, number 1 (1982), 31-45; David Winston, “Preexistence in Hellenic, Judaic and Mormon Sources,” in Reflections on Mormonism, ed. Truman G. Madsen (Provo, Utah: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 1978), 13-35.

5 See Hugh Nibley, Enoch the Prophet (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book and FARMS, 1986).

See Hugh Nibley, “Baptism for the Dead in Ancient Times,” Mormonism and Early Christianity (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book and FARMS, 1987), 100-167; and Peterson and Ricks, Offenders for a Word (Salt Lake City: Aspen Books, 1992), 108-110. See also John A. Tvedtnes’, review of “Did Jesus Establish Baptism for the dead?” by Luke P. Wilson, FARMS Review of Books volume 10, number 2 (1998): 184-199, and John A. Tvedtnes, “Baptism for the Dead in Early Christianity,” in The Temple in Time and Eternity, ed. Donald W. Parry and Stephen D. Ricks (Provo, Utah: FARMS, 1999), 55- 78.

7 See William J. Hamblin, “Aspects of an Early Christian Initiation Ritual,” in By Study and Also by Faith: Essays in Honor of Hugh W. Nibley, ed. John M. Lundquist and Stephen D. Ricks (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book and FARMS, 1990), 1:202-21; Ostler, “Clothed Upon, A Unique Aspect of Christian Antiquity,” BYU Studies volume 22, number 1 (1982), 31-45; Peterson and Ricks, Offenders for a Word, 110-17. See also

Barry R. Bickmore, Restoring the Ancient Church: Joseph Smith and Early Christianity (Ben Lomond, California: Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research, 1999).