What Role Does Textual Criticism Play in Understanding Religious Scripture?

LDS Perspective

From the perspective of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, textual criticism serves as a valuable but ultimately insufficient tool for understanding scripture unless accompanied by prophetic revelation and the Spirit. The Church teaches that through the transmission of the Bible across centuries, many "plain and precious" parts were removed or corrupted by the "great and abominable church," necessitating a restoration of correct text through divine means rather than purely academic reconstruction (1 Nephi 13:39). While scholarly textual criticism can identify variants and transmission errors, Latter-day Saints believe that the Joseph Smith Translation (JST) of the Bible represents the ultimate authority in correcting textual problems, as it was produced under direct divine in

Historical Perspective

Textual criticism serves as the foundational methodology for establishing the historical integrity of religious scriptures, particularly when original manuscripts—known as autographs—no longer exist. In the context of LDS scripture and biblical studies, textual criticism reveals the complex layers of transmission between ancient sources and modern translations. As noted in discussions of scriptural translation, the absence of original documents for the Old and New Testaments means scholars must work with "copies (and usually copies of copies) or interpretations of copies," creating inherent uncertainty about the precise words of original prophets. This challenge extends to uniquely Mormon scriptures, including the Book of Mormon translation manuscripts (of which only 28% survives), the Boo