The Bible
Mormons believe in the Bible. The Book of Mormon, contrary to popular opinion, is not the “Mormon Bible,” but is an additional book of scripture. In English, the official Mormon Bible is the King James translation. Other translations are used in other languages. While the Mormons have published their own Bible, it is the King James version, without changes to the basic text. The difference is in the footnotes, which includes references to other Mormon scriptures.
Mormons consider the Bible to be God’s word. However, although the original text is accurate, the translations were made by men who were not prophets. Many different translations of the Bible exist, and they often disagree with each other. Often new translations are based on old translations, not the original, and therefore, even more errors creep in. As a result, Mormons teach that the Bible is the word of God as far as it’s translated correctly.
We know, of course, that what is included in the Bible is not all that was written. The Bible was not prepared as a cohesive document, as was the Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon records the words of the first prophet of that book, Nephi. When he died, it was given to the next prophet to add to. Only one person had the complete book at any given time and only that person added to it. This is not the case with the Bible. The Bible was not kept as a unit. It was a collection of various writings that were eventually gathered together, and then a group of people decided which documents would be included in the final product. The books are not even in the order in which they were written-Revelations was not the last book written, for instance.
The Bible often mentions prophets whose lives are not recorded in the Bible and writings that we don’t have today, and even some of Paul’s epistles are missing:
Now the rest of the acts of Solomon, first and last, are they not written in the book of Nathan the prophet, and in the prophecy of Ahijah the Shilonite, and in the visions of Iddo the seer against Jeroboam the son of Nebat? 2 Chronicles 9:29
And the rest of the acts of Abijah, and his ways, and his sayings, are written in the story of the prophet Iddo. 2 Chronicles 13:22
I wrote unto you in an epistle not to company with fornicators: 1 Corinthians 5:9
From this we can see that things were lost or left out for various reasons. So certainly the Bible doesn’t have all God needed said. It is a sacred text and critical to the faith of Christians, because it tells us how the world began, how God interacted with His children on earth in the early days of the world, and how He wants us to live. It records the life, teachings, and divinity of the Savior. Without the Bible, we would have an incomplete knowledge of the spiritual universe.
However, it’s not the final word on God’s teachings, and there are many wonderful, inspired words waiting for you to discover. One place to start is with the Book of Mormon.