Mormons and the Bible: The Place of the Latter-day Saints in American Religion

Front Cover
OUP USA, Jun 27, 2013 - Bibles - 282 pages
Philip 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.
 

Contents

Preface 1991
ix
Reinterpreting Joseph Smith and Pondering the TwentyFirst Century
xxv
Acknowledgments
xlix
Abbreviations
li
A Note on Mormon Organization and Nomenclature
liii
The Bible in Antebellum America
1
Joseph Smith and the Bible 18201830
10
2 From the Birth of the Church to the Death of the Prophet
46
4 The Mormon Response to Higher Criticism
112
5 Why the King James Version?
162
6 Mormons and the Bible in the Late Twentieth Century
199
The Ambiguities of a New Religious Tradition
235
Select Bibliography
251
Select Bibliography since 1991
263
Index
267
Copyright

The Bible Moves West
80

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About the author (2013)

Philip L. Barlow is Arrington Chair of Mormon History and Culture at Utah State University. His books include The Oxford Handbook to Mormonism (co-edited with Terryl Givens, forthcoming, 2013), The New Historical Atlas of Religion in America (OUP 2000, co-authored with Edwin Scott Gaustad) and, as co-editor with Mark Silk, Religion and Public Life in the Midwest: America's Common Denominator? (2004). He is past president of the Mormon History Association.