The Bible underneath it

The Beliefs That Arrived Late

Heaven and hell, a devil at war with God, the dead rising: the Bible shows them developing over centuries. The Book of Mormon has them between 600 and 124 BC.

The point in one sentence

The Bible’s own books show these ideas arriving late and growing over centuries: a devil who is God’s enemy, a heaven-or-hell afterlife, the dead rising, a Messiah who dies and rises for sin. The Book of Mormon, set between about 600 and 124 BC, already has all of them, in many of the King James New Testament’s own phrases, and that is how a book written after the growing was finished would read, not how a book written before it began would.

What you were probably taught

If you grew up in the Church, you know these beliefs the way you know your own phone number. Satan fought God in a war in heaven and was thrown down. When we die, the spirit goes on living, and later the body rises. There is a judgment, and the wicked face torment. Jesus is the Christ who would come, die for our sins, and rise on the third day. Primary and seminary (the Church class for teens) present these as the faith of Adam, Abraham, Moses and every prophet after them.

The Church’s own scripture says so in plain words: “And thus the Gospel began to be preached, from the beginning” (Moses 5:58). That is a real claim, and it can be tested in one place: the Old Testament itself (what scholars call the Hebrew Bible). If the gospel was preached from the beginning, the oldest books should show it. Let’s read them.

The world the Old Testament came from

Start with how ancient Israelites talked about death. Jacob, believing his son Joseph was dead, says: “I will go down into the grave unto my son mourning” (Genesis 37:35). The Hebrew word behind “grave” there is Sheol (the Old Testament’s word for the place of the dead), a shadowy place under the earth. The King James translators rendered that one word as “grave,” “hell,” or “pit.” That is why a verse can say “hell” in English while describing nothing like the hell you were taught about.

Wikipedia’s article on Sheol says the Hebrew Bible’s mentions of it seem to describe “a place where both the righteous and the unrighteous dead go, regardless of their moral choices in life.” Notice who is going there: Jacob, a patriarch the Church teaches was righteous.

The same book is blunt about what comes next. “The dead praise not the Lord, neither any that go down into silence” (Psalm 115:17). “For the grave cannot praise thee, death can not celebrate thee” (Isaiah 38:18). “For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward” (Ecclesiastes 9:5). These were not enemies of faith. They were faithful Israelites describing what they believed.

Then history changed the picture. Babylon destroyed Jerusalem in 586 or 587 BC and carried off the leading Jews. The Persians conquered Babylon in 539 BC. Later, Greek kings ruled the land. In 167 BC one of them, Antiochus IV, outlawed Jewish worship and turned the Temple into a Greek-Jewish cult. Bart Ehrman, a New Testament scholar, writes that the hope of resurrection grew up inside Judaism as an answer to the suffering of righteous people, around this Maccabean crisis (a summary of his blog post, linked below). The Bible’s later writings begin to answer, and the answers grow over time. A devil who accuses people in God’s court turns into God’s enemy. A grave for everyone turns into reward for some and shame for others.

Keep one date in mind as you read the next section: the Book of Mormon opens in “the commencement of the first year of the reign of Zedekiah” (1 Nephi 1:4), dated by the Church to about 600 BC. Lehi’s family leaves Jerusalem before Babylon destroys it. They leave before Persia, before Greece, and centuries before the book of Daniel was written, if the scholarly consensus is right.

What the Book of Mormon says, in its own words

Here is what the Book of Mormon teaches, starting within a few decades of that departure.

The exhibits

This is the Old Testament side of the comparison, in the King James Version the Church prints, followed by what scholars say about it. Where scholars disagree, that is stated.

Check it yourself: the same words, two books

You do not need a scholar for the most checkable part. Many of the Book of Mormon’s key phrases on these doctrines are the King James New Testament’s own phrases. Here is page 162 of the first Book of Mormon, printed in 1830. The end of King Benjamin’s speech (Mosiah 3) sits at the top; the 1830 book calls the next section ‘Chapter II,’ which the Church now prints as Mosiah 4. The Church dates all of it to about 124 BC.

What is true on the other side

Latter-day Saints answer in four parts, and each part deserves to be heard.

• The Church teaches the Bible lost things. Nephi is shown a book that leaves “the mouth of a Jew” with “the fulness of the gospel” (1 Nephi 13:24), and that afterward a church “have taken away from the gospel of the Lamb many parts which are plain and most precious” (13:26) and “many plain and precious things taken away from the book” (13:28). Latter-day Saints read this as covering the Old Testament too, so the Bible we have is thinner on Christ than what the prophets taught, and the Book of Mormon brings the missing parts back. Nephi’s family also carried the brass plates, with “the prophecies of the holy prophets, from the beginning, even down to the commencement of the reign of Zedekiah” (1 Nephi 5:13). The Book of Mormon names prophets who are not in our Old Testament, Zenock, Neum and Zenos, and credits them with the crucifixion and the burial of the Messiah (1 Nephi 19:10).
• Joseph Smith’s Bible revision restores it. In Moses 4:1–4, God tells Moses that “Satan rebelled against me” and that “I caused that he should be cast down.” In Moses 5:7 an angel tells Adam the sacrifice is “a similitude of the sacrifice of the Only Begotten of the Father,” in 5:58 the gospel is preached “from the beginning,” and in 6:57 the name “Jesus Christ” is given to Adam’s children. (The Church’s headings date these chapters to June through December 1830.) (Joseph’s revision is called the JST, the Joseph Smith Translation. The JST page covers it.)
• Isaiah already says a being fell from heaven. “How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!” (Isaiah 14:12), and the Church’s chapter heading says ‘Lucifer was cast out of heaven for rebellion.’ The Book of Mormon prints the same chapter as 2 Nephi 24.
• There are earlier hints. “Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise” (Isaiah 26:19). “For I know that my redeemer liveth… yet in my flesh shall I see God” (Job 19:25–26). “God will redeem my soul from the power of the grave: for he shall receive me” (Psalm 49:15). “Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, and afterward receive me to glory” (Psalm 73:24). “Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell” (Psalm 16:10). “Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it” (Ecclesiastes 12:7). FAIR, a Latter-day Saint defense group, gives a general rule, not an answer on these doctrines: “Look hard at the historical context” before calling an idea an anachronism.

Here is what each leaves standing.

Plain and precious things and the brass plates. A belief can exist before anyone writes it down, and the Bible is not a full record of Israelite faith. Zenock, Neum and Zenos are not in our Bible, and no copy of their writings exists outside the Book of Mormon itself (Jacob 5 gives an allegory credited to Zenos), so nobody can check them against an older source. What stands: the Book of Mormon speeches that carry King James New Testament phrases, and the Bible’s own books, which do show the order. The rebuttals below take up the lost-teachings answer directly.

Moses 4 to 6. These texts first appear in Joseph Smith’s own dictation, in the Church’s dating June to December 1830. No older manuscript of Moses exists to show them as earlier than Joseph; the claim that they restore an older text is the same question this page is asking.

Isaiah 14. The chapter introduces itself as a proverb “against the king of Babylon” (14:4), and Wikipedia says the name is used there “in metaphorical reference to the king of Babylon.” It says nothing of Eve, a serpent, or a war in heaven; those come in Revelation 12:7–9 and 20:2, where the New Testament says ‘that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan.’ Luke 10:18, “I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven,” shows the idea of a fall was current by the New Testament. What stands: a fallen devil by New Testament times, and not before.

The earlier hints. Isaiah 26:19 is honestly disputed: Wikipedia says chapters 24 to 27 were “added at a much later date,” and readers differ on whether the verse means the nation or individuals. Ezekiel 37 explains itself: “these bones are the whole house of Israel” (verse 11). Job 19 sits in the same book as “he that goeth down to the grave shall come up no more” (Job 7:9). Psalm 49:15 and Psalm 73:24 say God “shall receive me” and “afterward receive me to glory” without saying when or what. Ecclesiastes 9:5 and 12:7 are in the same book, and 12:7 says the spirit returns to God without a judgment, a resurrection, or a split. The Bible has hints. It does not have the finished picture until Daniel and the New Testament.

The common rebuttals

“The Bible lost those teachings. The Book of Mormon is what got restored.”

Start with what 1 Nephi 13 itself says. The record leaves the Jews “in purity” with “the fulness of the gospel” (13:24–25), and the plain and precious things are taken away afterward, by a church that forms after the twelve apostles (13:26). The Great Isaiah Scroll below dates to about 125 BC, before any of that, and it reads like the Bible we have. A believer can answer that the loss was earlier, or that prophets like Zenos were never in our Bible. Then the claim has no test left, and no older text to point to. Nothing could count against it. Meanwhile the Book of Mormon claims to come from 600 BC, in the same generation as Jeremiah (known as a prophet from 626 BC until after Jerusalem fell, per Wikipedia) and Ezekiel (exiled in Babylon, with visions from 593 to 571 BC). Ezekiel told the exiles that God would “open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel” (Ezekiel 37:12), and explained the picture himself: “these bones are the whole house of Israel.” The nation was coming home. 1 Nephi 1:4 says many prophets were prophesying in Jerusalem that year, “that they must repent, or the great city Jerusalem must be destroyed.” In those same years Nephi, in the new land, is teaching a bodily resurrection of every person and a lake of fire.

“Of course the words match the New Testament. Joseph was given the King James wording to translate with. The ideas are still Lehi’s.”

This is the translation answer, and it deserves a straight reply. Believers say Joseph translated by a gift, not word for word, so the English can borrow King James language. That explains why the English reads like Revelation. It does not explain why the Bible’s own books, from the same centuries, show none of these ideas in finished form. And it concedes the most checkable thing on this page: many of the key phrases in the Book of Mormon on these doctrines are the words of the 1611 translators and a first-century book. The historicity page and the translation page look at the King James wording in the Book of Mormon in detail. What this answer cannot supply is any text, in Hebrew or any language, that has these teachings in an older form. What the evidence in hand shows is King James New Testament phrases sitting inside speeches dated 600 to 124 BC.

“Isaiah 53 and Job 19 show the Old Testament already had it.”

Isaiah 53 is the best Old Testament passage on suffering for others, and Christians have read it as Jesus since the first century. It is also the passage Jewish readers read as the nation. Either way, the word “Messiah” is not in it. Wikipedia reports scholars placing this part of Isaiah in the 6th century BC exile, after Lehi had left. The Book of Mormon prints Isaiah 53 itself (Mosiah 14). If Wikipedia is right that chapters 40–55 were written in the exile, they did not exist when Lehi left Jerusalem. A believer can hold that Isaiah himself wrote all of it; few scholars today do. Job 19 says “in my flesh shall I see God,” and the same book says the dead “shall come up no more.” Neither passage says a Messiah rises, and none names Jesus.

What this means

Here is what you have just seen. In the Old Testament’s own pages, Satan is a member of God’s court in Job and Zechariah, and in Chronicles the role is handed to him from God. Everyone goes to Sheol, and the Bible says the dead do not know anything. The first clear promise that many of the dead will rise, some to life and some to contempt, is Daniel 12:2, in a book scholars date to 167 to 163 BC. A suffering servant appears in Isaiah, but the Hebrew Bible never names a Messiah who dies for sin and rises.

And in the Book of Mormon, in the Church’s own dating, the same ideas are fully grown in 2 Nephi about 400 years before the book of Daniel and nearly 600 years before Jesus, spoken by people who left Jerusalem before Babylon destroyed it, and in many phrases that match Revelation, Matthew, Mark and John. The two printed pages above are the 1830 edition.

These beliefs have a history you can trace in the Bible. The Book of Mormon has none of that history. It has the finished product.

The one answer left is that the Bible lost these teachings and the Book of Mormon gave them back. Nephi himself says the loss came after the twelve apostles, and the oldest Isaiah we have is about 125 BC. If every gap can be called a loss, no older text could ever show you anything. So ask the plain question: when a book that says it is from 600 BC has the teaching of 165 BC and AD 95, what do you conclude about when it was written?