Not because Latter-day Saints dislike the Bible. Many sincere Latter-day Saints read it, quote it, and believe it contains the word of God. The problem is deeper than that. The problem is the standard being used.
The LDS Church teaches that the Bible is the word of God only “as far as it is translated correctly,” according to Article of Faith 1:8. But in the very same article, the Book of Mormon is received as the word of God without that same caution attached to it. The Bible gets a warning label. The Book of Mormon gets a testimony invitation.
That is the double standard.
The Bible is questioned even though it has a massive public manuscript tradition. The Book of Mormon is defended even though its claimed ancient source, the gold plates, is no longer available for examination. The Bible is treated as damaged whenever it contradicts LDS doctrine. The Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, Pearl of Great Price, and Joseph Smith’s revelations are treated as restored truth even when they introduce teachings unknown to the apostolic Church.
This is not a small issue.
It affects the whole foundation of Mormonism.
The Bible is not a mysterious book floating in historical darkness. The New Testament has thousands of Greek manuscripts, ancient translations, lectionaries, and quotations from early Christian writers. Scholars debate textual variants, but the reason they can debate them is because there is so much evidence to examine. The manuscript tradition is public, testable, and historically traceable. The New Testament Virtual Manuscript Room, for example, exists specifically for the study of Greek New Testament manuscripts and provides scholarly access to manuscript data and images.
That does not mean every copy is identical. No serious Christian scholar argues that. Scribes made mistakes. Words were sometimes spelled differently. Lines were occasionally skipped. Some passages have important textual questions. But here is the key point: those variants are visible because the evidence survived. We can compare manuscripts. We can study early translations. We can examine citations in the Church Fathers. We can see the history of the text rather than being asked to accept a hidden document on authority alone.
The Book of Mormon does not stand on that same ground.
There are early nineteenth-century manuscripts connected to Joseph Smith’s dictation of the Book of Mormon. The Joseph Smith Papers note that portions of the original manuscript survive, amounting to roughly 28 percent of the text. That is historically valuable for studying the production of the Book of Mormon in Joseph Smith’s own time. But those are not ancient Nephite or Lamanite manuscripts. They are not pre-Columbian documents. They cannot be compared with an ancient manuscript tradition because no such manuscript tradition exists.
That difference is enormous.
With the Bible, we have ancient manuscripts copied across centuries and regions. With the Book of Mormon, we have nineteenth-century manuscript evidence connected to Joseph Smith and his scribes. With the Bible, scholars can compare Greek manuscripts, ancient versions, and early Christian quotations. With the Book of Mormon, no independent scholar can examine ancient gold plates, date them, translate them, compare them to other Nephite texts, or place them within a known ancient literary culture.
The LDS Church itself teaches that Joseph Smith returned the gold plates to the angel Moroni after the translation. One official LDS article even states plainly that we do not get to personally inspect them.
So the Bible is questioned despite public evidence, while the Book of Mormon is trusted despite the disappearance of its claimed ancient source.
That should trouble anyone who cares about truth.
The problem becomes sharper when archaeology and geography enter the discussion. The Bible’s world is not imaginary. Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth, Corinth, Ephesus, Rome, Galilee, the Jordan River, the Temple, the Roman governors, the Jewish sects, the geography of Acts, and many other historical settings are part of the known world of antiquity. Archaeology does not prove every theological claim of Christianity, but it does show that the Bible speaks within a recognizable historical landscape.
The Book of Mormon claims to describe large civilizations in the ancient Americas, with wars, cities, migrations, prophets, records, and nations. Yet the LDS Church does not take an official position on the specific geographic locations of Book of Mormon events in the ancient Americas. Its own Gospel Topics page says speculation about Book of Mormon geography may mislead rather than enlighten.
That does not automatically disprove the Book of Mormon. But it does expose the weakness of the comparison. If the Bible is going to be treated with suspicion because of translation history, textual variants, and transmission, then surely the Book of Mormon should face at least the same level of scrutiny when its central civilizations cannot be securely located, its ancient manuscripts cannot be examined, and its claimed source artifact is unavailable.
But that is not how the LDS system usually works.
The Bible is put on trial.
The Book of Mormon is protected by testimony.
That is the hypocrisy.
The irony becomes even harder to ignore with the Joseph Smith Translation.
Joseph Smith claimed to restore or revise biblical passages. Some of those revisions are minor. Others are massive. One of the most striking examples is JST Genesis 50, where Joseph Smith’s revision adds a prophecy about a future “choice seer.” LDS materials identify this figure as Joseph Smith himself.
Think about what that means.
Joseph Smith claimed the Bible had been corrupted or had lost plain and precious truths. He then produced a revision that includes a prophecy pointing to himself. Yet the LDS Church does not use the full Joseph Smith Translation as its official English Bible. Its official English Bible remains the King James Version, a Protestant translation produced out of the very Christian tradition Joseph Smith claimed needed restoration. The LDS Church’s own Gospel Topics page says that in English, the King James Version is used as the official Bible of the Church.
That creates an uncomfortable irony.
The LDS Church questions the Bible’s reliability, relies on the King James Bible, rejects the sufficiency of historic Christian Scripture, uses Joseph Smith’s Bible revisions selectively, and then asks people to trust new LDS scripture with far less public historical support.
This is not consistent.
If the Bible supports LDS teaching, it is quoted.
If the Bible contradicts LDS teaching, it is said to be mistranslated, incomplete, corrupted, or misunderstood.
If the Book of Mormon lacks ancient manuscripts, believers are told to pray about it.
If the Bible has textual variants, skeptics are told it cannot be fully trusted.
If Joseph Smith adds himself into Genesis 50, it is treated as restoration.
If Christians ask for ancient manuscript evidence for that addition, the standard shifts back to prophetic authority.
That is not careful reasoning. It is moving the goalposts.
From a biblical Christian perspective, the issue is not whether every manuscript copy of Scripture is identical. The issue is whether God preserved His word sufficiently for His people to know the gospel, test doctrine, and remain faithful.
Christianity has always been rooted in public revelation. Christ came in history. The apostles preached in public. The gospel was proclaimed, taught, written, copied, read in the churches, defended by the early Christians, and handed down. Paul did not tell believers to wait for a nineteenth-century restoration. He warned them not to accept another gospel, even if it came from an angel from heaven: “But even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you… let him be accursed” (Galatians 1:8).
Jude speaks of “the faith once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 1:3). Not temporarily delivered. Not mostly lost. Not unavailable until Joseph Smith. Once for all delivered.
The Bereans were commended because they tested Paul’s preaching by the Scriptures (Acts 17:11). That is the Christian standard. True doctrine is tested by the apostolic faith, not the other way around.
The LDS standard reverses this.
Instead of testing Joseph Smith by the apostolic gospel, the LDS system often tests the apostolic gospel by Joseph Smith. The Bible is allowed to speak clearly until it challenges Mormonism. Then suddenly the Bible becomes uncertain. But when LDS scripture makes extraordinary claims without the same kind of manuscript, archaeological, or historical support, the believer is told to trust the Restoration.
If the Bible can be trusted only when LDS authority approves it, then the Bible is no longer the final witness. LDS authority is. The phrase “as far as it is translated correctly” becomes a pressure valve. It allows the LDS system to use the Bible when convenient and dismiss it when necessary.
That is selective authority.
A Christian does not need to pretend there are no textual questions in the Bible. We should study them honestly. We should know the manuscript evidence. We should care about translation. We should not use shallow arguments or pretend the history is simpler than it is.
But the answer to textual variants is not Joseph Smith.
The answer is faithful, careful handling of the Scriptures God has preserved.
The Bible does not need the Book of Mormon to rescue it. It does not need Joseph Smith to complete it. It does not need a nineteenth-century prophet to make the apostolic gospel trustworthy. It needs to be read, believed, studied carefully, and obeyed.
The deepest hypocrisy in the LDS approach is this: it asks Christians to distrust the Bible where it contradicts Mormonism, but trust the Bible where it can be made useful to Mormonism. It demands intense suspicion toward the ancient Christian Scriptures, while asking for deep confidence in modern LDS scriptures that lack the Bible’s public historical and textual foundation.
That is not a higher view of Scripture. It is a lower view of Scripture replaced by a higher view of Joseph Smith.
And that is the real issue...
The question is not simply, “Do Latter-day Saints believe in the Bible?”
The question is: Who gets the final word when the Bible and Joseph Smith disagree?
Historic Christianity answers clearly.
The apostolic gospel judges every later claim.
Not the other way around.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Articles of Faith 1:8
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/pgp/a-of-f/1
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, “Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible”
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/history/topics/joseph-smith-translation-of-the-bible
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Bible Dictionary, “Joseph Smith Translation”
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bd/joseph-smith-translation
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, JST Genesis 50
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/jst/jst-gen/50
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, “Gold Plates”
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/history/topics/gold-plates
CSNTM, “How many Greek manuscripts of the New Testament are there?”
https://www.csntm.org/2023/02/21/ask-the-prof-how-many-greek-manuscripts-of-the-new-testament-are-there/
CSNTM, Papyrus 52
https://manuscripts.csntm.org/manuscript/View/GA_P52
Bruce M. Metzger and Bart D. Ehrman, The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration, 4th ed., Oxford University Press, 2005.
Smithsonian Institution statement regarding the Book of Mormon, reproduced here
https://mit.irr.org/smithsonian-institution-statement-on-book-of-mormon