The Testimony of Two Nations

Abstract

The Book of Mormon has always claimed to be “another testament of Jesus Christ,” joining the Old and New Testaments to proclaim a belief in Christ’s divinity and define the consequences of this belief. The Book of Mormon is printed and bound in ways that emphasize its similarity to the Bible, and its word choices and cadences are modeled directly on the King James Version of the Bible, from which it also quotes liberally. This book argues that the Book of Mormon does not seek to expand or even clarify the Christian canon, as Latter-day Saints often argue; rather, it creates an entirely new canon out of itself and the Christian Bible in the same way that the New Testament created a new canon out of itself and the Hebrew Bible. In order to do this, the Book of Mormon, like the New Testament, uses shared typologies to reinterpret its predecessor text in light of its own revelations and assumptions. Each of the book’s main chapters examines a different way in which the Book of Mormon attaches itself to the Christian Bible by replicating its narrative patterns and creating shared typologies that both extend and subvert their biblical counterparts.