BOM The Title Page of the Book of Mormon

Still inspired by something that Elder David A. Bednar said roughly two years ago in a speech at Brigham Young University, and in sync with the 2016 Gospel Doctrine curriculum of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I’m launching a project to read through the Book of Mormon, one chapter each day, and to post something about each chapter on my blog.

What I post will be very brief, with no pretense of being exhaustive.  (If I try to do too much, if I over-promise, I won’t be able to keep this up.)  I’ll often simply choose a single verse or a single passage for comment.  And not necessarily the most obvious or most important verse or passage.  Perhaps I’ll share a link to a relevant article or book, or post an appropriate quotation from somebody else.

In turn, I’ll invite anybody out there in the audience to post whatever comment he or she may like — derisive and mocking comments will likely be deleted, though sincere questions are welcome — on any aspect of that chapter.  I would appreciate shared insights, interesting cross references, extrascriptural quotations bearing on a topic in the chapter, favorite verses within the chapter (and reasons why they particularly speak to you), historical comments, links to helpful articles.  Whatever.

In this way, perhaps some of us can read and learn about the Book of Mormon together.

And, of course, if this effort interests you, feel free (if you must or if you choose) to miss a day or a week or a chapter or a whole book and then to come back in.  I’ll probably miss sometimes, too.  (That’s why I’m getting an early start, still in 2015.)  But the goal is one chapter a day.  Day after day.  This will, therefore, take the better part of 2016.

I start, today, with the Title Page of the Book of Mormon.  I’ll be quite a bit more long-winded with this entry than I generally intend to be.  Tomorrow, I’ll do 1 Nephi 1, and I’ll work through the Book of Mormon in order, to its conclusion.  Then I may do the four gospels again.  Or the Doctrine and Covenants.  Or something else altogether.  Who knows?

And now to today’s text:

“I wish to mention here,” said Joseph Smith, “that the title-page of the Book of Mormon is a literal translation, taken from the very last leaf, on the left hand side of the collection or book of plates, which contained the record which has been translated; . . . and that said title-page is not . . . a modern composition, either of mine or of any other man who has lived or does live in this generation” (History of the Church 1:71.).

Two of the things that impress me about the Title Page of the Book of Mormon:

1.  

The first is its declaration of the purpose of the Book of Mormon as whole, which, it declares, was written “to the convincing of the Jew and Gentile that Jesus is the Christ, the Eternal God, manifesting himself unto all nations.”

It is, in other words, a thoroughly Christian and Christ-centered book.  In that light, as in many (any?) others, the common Evangelical announcement that Mormonism isn’t Christian is plainly misleading, to say the best of it.

2.

The second is its frank and candid disavowal of inerrancy:  “And now, if there are faults” —  and the author of the Title Page obviously allows for that possibility — “they are the mistakes of men; wherefore, condemn not the things of God, that ye may be found spotless at the judgment-seat of Christ.”

The disinclination to claim infallibility or inerrancy is followed by an exhortation to charity on the part of readers.  (This seems to have been a concern among the writers of the Book of Mormon.  Compare Ether 12:23-28.)

Posted from Richmond, Virginia