Description
Book SynopsisPhilip L. Barlow offers an in-depth analysis of the approaches taken to the Bible by major Mormon leaders, from its beginnings to the present. He shows that Mormon attitudes toward the Bible comprise an extraordinary mix of conservative, liberal, and radical ingredients: an almost fundamentalist adherence to the King James Version co-exists with belief in the possibility of new revelation and surprising ideas about the limits of human language. Barlow''s exploration takes important steps toward unraveling the mystery of this quintessential American religious phenomenon. This updated edition of Mormons and the Bible includes an extended bibliography and a new preface, casting Joseph Smith''s mission into a new frame and treating evolutions in Mormonism''s biblical usage in recent decades.
Trade ReviewTwenty-two years after it first appeared, Mormons and the Bible is as much a classic of American religious history broadly as of Mormonism narrowly. * The Juvenile Instructor *
Table of ContentsPreface (1991) ; Preface (2013): Reinterpreting Joseph Smith and Pondering the Twenty-first Century ; Acknowledgments ; Abbreviations ; A Note on Mormon Organization and Nomenclature ; Introduction: The Bible in Antebellum America ; 1. Before Mormonism: Joseph Smith and the Bible, 1820-1830 ; 2. From the Birth of the Church to the Death of the Prophet ; 3. Diversity and Development: The Bible Moves West ; 4. The Mormon Response to Higher Criticism ; 5. Why the King James Version? ; 6. The Late Twentieth Century [will need to be corrected in chapter headings] ; Summary: The Ambiguities of a New Religious Tradition ; Select Bibliography ; Select Bibliography since 1991 ; Index
