For the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, commonly known as the Mormon church, there are 4 canons of scriptures.
• The Bible
• The Book of Mormon
• The Doctrine and Covenants
• Pearl of Great Price

Most Christian religions exclusively use the bible with various differences. The Catholic Bible contains what many refer to as apocryphal books for example. Most English speaking Protestants rely on the King James Version of the Bible. The LDS church is perhaps unique in that it accepts additional books that are not related to the biblical narrative.
Here is a brief explanation of each of the texts:

The Bible

The Bible is the record of the Hebrews and the emergence of the 12 tribes of Israel. The Bible is broken up into two parts: the Old Testament and the New Testament. The Old Testament contains 39 books that are divided into three categories: history, literature, and prophesy. The New Testament was written after Christ was crucified. It has the four gospels (or testimonies), and a number of epistles or letters written to the fledgling church, and ends with the Book of Revelation, an apocalyptic book filled with imagery nobody really understands despite what they may tell you.

The events of the bible largely take place in Palestine, or the regions of modern day Israel. Portions of the bible take place in what is now Iraq, such as The Book of Daniel who was in exile. Some of the New Testament epistles were written from Cyprus and other locations around the Mediterranean. The first five books of the Bible are attributed to Moses who lived about 1400 BC and the Bible ends with Paul and other New Testament authors in about 70 AD. In a future blog I will attempt to explain how the Bible came into being to provide some context to the various books and histories.

The Book of Mormon

The Book of Mormon is a record of a people who lived somewhere in the Americas starting in 600 BC and ending around 450 AD. It is a book of scripture like the Bible and is considered to be a second witness of Jesus Christ. The original document, engraved on gold leaf metal plates was given to a young man named Joseph Smith by an angel to translate into English and was first published by him in 1830 with an unprecedented 3000 copies of the first addition. The book begins with a prophet named Lehi who lived in the land of Jerusalem during the time of King Zedekiah and just prior to the invasion of Babylon. Lehi was called to prophesy to the Jews and was finally warned in a vision to leave the city with his family. They were commanded to build a ship and they traveled to the Americas. Whereas much of the Bible was written by prophets from the tribe of Judah, Lehi was a descendent from Joseph; therefore is a subtle but important observation that these people were not Jews. In the book we learn that, after his resurrection, Jesus visited His faithful followers in the Americas and established his gospel here as he had done in Jerusalem.

The Doctrine and Covenants

Doctrine and Covenants (D&C) – This book was written between 1823 and 1847. It is a collection of 136 revelations received largely by Joseph Smith. In contrast to most of the books in the Bible and Book of Mormon which contains doctrine interspersed with a historical narrative, the D&C is primarily doctrine. It is more comparable to the book of Hebrews in the New Testament. As Joseph Smith worked on translating the Book of Mormon, questions would arise and God would reveal truths to hi
m line upon line, precept upon precept. These revelations and others are what make up this book of scripture. Much of the unique teachings of the LDS faith are found in the Doctrine and Covenants, but certainly these teachings can be supported from the Bible.

The Pearl of Great Price

Pearl of Great Price – This book contains 5 parts:

• The Book of Moses which is restored passages from the Book of Genesis in the bible as written by Moses.
• The Book of Abraham which is not found in the Bible and predates the Bible by a few hundred years. There are many traditions of Abraham and it is fascinating how many of these traditions that were discovered well after this book was written are found within its pages.
• Joseph Smith Matthew which is restored verses of Mathew 24, a chapter that discusses the signs of the times prior to the second coming.
• Joseph Smith History which is an autobiographical history of Joseph Smith’s life.
• The Articles of Faith which are 13 points of some key doctrines of the LDS church. This was written by Joseph Smith in response to an inquiry from a journalist.

Why do we have these additional books? I often ask the question ‘why not?’. Why did Christians add to the Torah? Just because the tradition has been to only have the bible for the past 2000 years does not make it a requirement. If God loves his children, why wouldn’t He visit all of them and give all of them books of scriptures to learn His will concerning them? The LDS faith rejects the notion of scriptural inerrancy and closed cannon. Scriptures are written by inspiration of God, but they are still written by people who are limited by vocabulary, culture, personal biases, and a host of other barriers to producing perfect manuscript. Besides, even if they were written word for word as God intended, they are being written in languages that simply cannot convey clearly any given teaching. Ancient Hebrew only had 4000 words to work with, compared to English with some 1,000,000 plus. The LDS faith also does not believe in closed cannon. As it states in our Articles of Faith:’ We believe all that God has revealed, all that He does now reveal, and we believe that He will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the Kingdom of God’.