A fine line divides scripture from non-scripture, writes Robert M. Price in American Apocrypha. There are books that are not in the Bible that are as powerful and authoritative as anything in the canon. At the same time, much of the Bible was written centures after the events it narrates by scribes using fictitious names. Clearly, the hallmark of scripture is not historical accuracy but rather its spiritual impact...

For the past 175 years, the Latter-day Saint Church has taught that Native Americans and Polynesians are descended from ancient seafaring Israelites. Recent DNA research confirms what anthropologists have been saying for nearly as many years, that Native Americans are originally from Siberia and Polynesians from Southeast Asia. In the current volume, molecular biologist Simon Southerton explains the theology and the science and how the former is being reshaped...

Available for the first time fifty years after the author's death, Studies of the Book of Mormon presents this respected church leader's investigation into Mormonism's founding scripture. Reflecting his talent for combining history and theology, B. H. Roberts considered the evident parallels between the Book of Mormon and Ethan Smith's View of the Hebrews, a book that predated the Mormon scripture by seven years. If the Book of Mormon...

As children, we were told the stories of Paul as didactic tales meant to keep us reverent and obedient. As adults reading the New Testament, we catch glimpses of a very different kind of disciple—an ascetic hermit whom Tertullian dubbed “the second apostle of Marcion and the apostle of the heretics.” What does scholarship tell us about the enigmatic thirteenth apostle who looms larger than life in the New...

Twenty-nine-year-old geologist and college president James E. Talmage noted in his journal in 1891: "Today I had an interview with the First Presidency of the Church ... another appointment for an interview was set for Monday next." From these two meetings came a commission to write twenty-four lectures, twenty-two of which were ultimately delivered to college audiences, treating the basic tenets of LDS beliefs. The lectures were then published...

This book marks the publication of the first, full translantion of the so-called Joseph Smith Egyptian papyri translated into English. The papyri were acquired by members of the LDS Church in the 1830s in Kirtland, Ohio, and rediscovered in the mid-1960s in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. They served as the basis for Joseph Smith's “Book of Abraham,” published in Nauvoo, Illinois, in 1842 and later...

There was frustration in Oliver Cowdery's 4 February 1835 letter to Bishop Newel K. Whitney. Oliver Cowdery was trying to acquire "the original copy of ... The Law of the Church" and had so far been unable to locate a reliable source. He even confessed publicly to being "not a little surprised" in preparing the revelations of Joseph Smith for publication "to find the previous print[ing in the church...

Curt Bench's thorough introduction traces the publishing history of the revelations, which first appeared in a serialized form in The Evening and the Morning Star beginning in 1832 in Independence, Missouri, and continued through 1833 in Kirtland, Ohio. The volume contains parallel columns comparing the text of the 1832-33 revelations to those printed in 1833 in Independence as A Book of Commandments.

In this monumental work, Professor Price offers an inclusive New Testament canon with twenty-seven additional sacred books from the first three centuries of Christianity, including a few of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Nag Hammadi writings. Price also reconstructs the Gospel of Marcion and the lost Gospel according to the Hebrews. Here, for the first time, is a canon representing all major factions of the early church.

There are many ways to approach scripture. At times we search the sacred narratives for doctrinal understanding or theological insights. Other times we might be interested in historical, cultural, and linguistic issues. Another, more common, approach is to see ourselves in the narrative stories and interpret them based on our own personal journeys and intellectual and spiritual background—to draw lessons for our own lives.