How to read the BoM after knowing its history?

Two options have worked for me.

#1 – Highlight and cling to only my favorite parts. If it is only Matthew 5 and 3rd Nephi – so be it.

#2 – Discard it for a time. The cool thing about Mormonism is the whole living prophet thing. If you still find value in the religion, even if it’s just having wholesome people to hang out with, turn to modern leaders words. DarkJedi and most of us here love President Uchtdorf’s words. According to our religion when he speaks in GC it’s scripture. His words can be your anchor.

You don’t have to say anything to anyone, just begin building a quotes book with holy words from leaders, lean on them. Who knows you may remind others of spiritual truths through them.

Don’t worry about historicity. Read it only for thewords in it – and try to read it as if for the first time, without any preconceptions and without paying any attention to the chapter and verse structure. Read it as a story, whether historically accurate or not. Try to understand what it teaches distinctly separate from its place within Mormonism and the LDS Church – what it actually says, not what most members think it says.

That might or might not help, but I have come to love it for itself. There are some truly incredible things in its pages – some pearls of truly great price to me.

I more or less treat all scripture as literature these days. I do it with the BoM more so than the Bible. The BoM does read like a novel if one approaches it that way. I like the message of the BoM but I don’t believe every word is the word of God. I like the message of A Christmas Carol too – and also don’t believe every word to be the word of God.

The Book of Mormon made a lot more sense to me once I became more familiar with it’s history. It certainly didn’t start out that way.

It’s almost reflexive, when we have a faith crisis/transition we want to tell our ecclesiastical leaders all about it. Early on I went to the BP with a part of my story and he gave me council to pray and read the scriptures (which I was already doing more than at any other point in my life). I immediately rebutted, “Every time I read the Book of Mormon all I can see are the flaws.” In other words, following your advice would only drive the nails in further. Obviously at that point I couldn’t read the BoM from my different perspective on history.

Understanding a little more about the BoM’s place in history has helped. It really brings to life this quote:

Yes, my beloved brothers and sisters, the Book of Mormon is the keystone of our religion—the keystone of our testimony, the keystone of our doctrine, and the keystone in the witness of our Lord and Savior.

The second great reason why we must make the Book of Mormon a center focus of study is that it was written for our day. The Nephites never had the book; neither did the Lamanites of ancient times. It was meant for us.

Read that quote through your new lens. The Book of Mormon came at a time where it could addresses religious disputes and it opened up theological dead ends. The message might very well be that we can look to other, contemporary sources for answers to our spiritual questions. Now in some ways I feel like people have worked themselves right back into the same trap, before it was only the bible, the BoM ushered in an era where we could look forward to there being new sources, but now I consider ourselves right back in the same predicament as before except this time we have a few more books to go by.

And that’s why having a faith transition is so wonderful. I’m free to take what I will from the Book of Mormon. I’m free to leave what I will from the Book of Mormon (that was a new and powerful concept for me). Not only that, I’ve recognized that I can take or leave messages from any book and those messages become my scriptures. I don’t have to sit around and wait for a religious body to canonize something, I can do that myself.

I may save some other thoughts for later but one last thing, “the keystone of our religion.” Who said that? Some guy. Some guy that felt like the BoM was the keystone to his religion. Just because it was the keystone to his religion doesn’t mean it has to be the keystone of my religion. Me? I might phrase it, “the Book of Mormon was the catalyst to my spirituality.” It hasn’t got that prophetic ring to it but it works for me for the moment.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was a deeply flawed man – and his speeches have been used to justify some things I don’t like, personally – but he was prophetic in the truest sense of the word – and his speeches have a power that I like when I read them.

I love to study the back-story of how those speeches came to be, but I don’t let the flawed nature of the source destroy the meaning I take from them, and I don’t let the factors of historicity decrease my love of their messages.

D&C 121 is another example of an amazing piece of writing, especially in context of the time and situation that led to its publication. When I read it closely, as ONE message, not two or three distinct messages (with the last verses about unrighteousness dominion as the capstone of the first verses where Joseph is begging God to exercise unrighteousness dominion, essentially), it became one of my favorite pieces in all literature. I don’t care about any other aspect of Joseph when reading that section; nothing changes the power of the words themselves and what they teach.

I would say the same about much of the Bible – and inspirational books by modern authors – and the Koran – and the religious canons of various groups and on and on and on. I like a book or other written record based on my reaction to the book or other written record – what I get from it, not what others say I should get from it. I don’t mind sifting through manure to get pearls of great price – and I find little if any true manure in the Book of Mormon, especially when I study closely and put what is there in historical context (the time it was produced and/or the time it chronicles). Lots of sawdust, perhaps, but little or no true manure. Conversely, there are a lot of wonderful pearls.

Well said Heber.

I would say the same about much of the Bible – and inspirational books by modern authors – and the Koran – and the religious canons of various groups and on and on and on.

The BoM falls firmly into the camp of wisdom literature for me.

I think of the Psalms and Proverbs of the bible. Many of these come across as just little bits of wisdom – like the moral in Aesop’s fables. What makes them special in the religious sense is that they are accepted by a religious group to have special significance (religious canon, word of God, etc.)

All of this does not really motivate me to read the BoM more (I almost never do because my time is so limited and my potential list of good books is so long) but at least it helps me to have less angst when I do read it.