Scriptures, prophets, and the Book of Mormon

The Old Testament canon was substantially settled by Jewish scholars over centuries, with debate over a few books continuing into the first centuries A.D. The New Testament took even longer. Different early Christian communities used different lists; some included books like the Shepherd of Hermas or the Didache that were later excluded, and some excluded books like Revelation or Hebrews that were later included. A widely cited turning point is a 367 A.D. letter from Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, listing the twenty-seven New Testament books we use today, and church councils in the following decades affirmed similar lists. This was a centuries-long process of communities reaching consensus, not a single moment when God announced the list was final.

The claim that revelation and scripture stopped at that point is a theological conclusion drawn afterward, not a promise scripture makes about itself. 2 Nephi 29 challenges that conclusion directly: God speaking through one people does not mean He cannot speak through another.

Canon. The officially recognized collection of scripture. Ours is open, meaning God can add to it; most other Christian canons are considered closed.

The stick of Judah and the stick of Joseph. Ezekiel's image (Ezekiel 37:15–19) for the Bible and the Book of Mormon becoming one testimony of Christ.

Reformed Egyptian. The language Mormon says the Book of Mormon was written in (Mormon 9:32), a script no other document has been found to independently confirm, which is itself an honest complication addressed below.

Seer stone. A stone Joseph Smith used, placed in a hat to block out light, through which witnesses say the English words of the translation appeared to him. Distinct from, though related to, the Urim and Thummim.

• c. 550 B.C.Nephi predicts, in the Book of Mormon's own text, the exact "we need no more Bible" objection people would raise against it (2 Nephi 29:3).
• c. 90–100 A.D.The last New Testament books, including Revelation, are written. No single moment declares the canon finished.
• 367 A.D.Athanasius's Easter letter lists the twenty-seven New Testament books used today, an early and influential but not universally final step toward consensus.
• 397 A.D.The Council of Carthage affirms a New Testament list matching Athanasius's, though debate over a few books continues in some regions for generations after.
• 1546The Council of Trent formally and infallibly defines the Catholic canon, including books Protestants would later reject as the Apocrypha.
• 1825–1827Joseph Smith is repeatedly visited by Moroni and eventually receives the gold plates, a physical object claimed as a second scriptural record from an entirely separate people.
• 1829–1830The Book of Mormon is translated and published, roughly 1,460 years after Nephi's predicted objection was supposedly written down.

The canon was never closed by a single divine announcement. It closed by centuries of human consensus, which is precisely the kind of process 2 Nephi 29 says should not be mistaken for God's final word.

This is worth knowing before a critic explains it to you, because for much of the twentieth century, Church art and teaching described Joseph translating by directly reading the engravings on the gold plates through the Urim and Thummim, a pair of transparent stones. That is not what most witnesses of the process actually describe.

According to firsthand accounts from Emma Smith, Martin Harris, David Whitmer, and Oliver Cowdery, Joseph often placed a single seer stone, a small brown stone he had found years earlier while digging a well, into the bottom of a hat, put his face into the hat to block out light, and dictated English words that appeared to him, while the plates themselves sat nearby, sometimes covered, sometimes not even in the room. The Church's own 2013 Gospel Topics essay, Book of Mormon Translation, states this directly: "Joseph placed either the interpreters or the seer stone in a hat, pressed his face into the hat to block out extraneous light, and read aloud the English words that appeared on the instrument."

Why does this matter? Because it means the physical plates were not strictly necessary for the day-to-day work of dictation, which some find unsettling and others find remarkable: whatever was happening, it did not depend on Joseph being able to read an ancient language by sight. Elder Russell M. Nelson described the same process from David Whitmer's account decades before he became president of the Church, and the Church has published photographs of the actual stone. This is not a fact the Church hid and later confessed; it is a detail that fell out of common retelling and had to be recovered and re-taught. That distinction matters, and it is fair to expect both things to be true at once.

Nephi, answering the objection centuries before it would be raised:

"Because that I have spoken one word ye need not suppose that I cannot speak another; for my work is not yet finished."2 Nephi 29:10

The Church's own Gospel Topics essay, stating plainly how the translation worked:

"Joseph placed either the interpreters or the seer stone in a hat, pressed his face into the hat to block out extraneous light, and read aloud the English words that appeared on the instrument."Book of Mormon Translation, Gospel Topics Essay, 2013

And Moroni, closing the record with a promise rather than a demand for blind acceptance:

"Ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true."Moroni 10:4

The Catholic Church holds that public revelation, the deposit of faith, was completed with the death of the last apostle, and that the seventy-three-book canon, finalized at the Council of Trent in 1546 in response to the Reformation, is closed (Catechism, paragraphs 65–66, 120). Scripture and sacred Tradition together, interpreted by the Magisterium, are considered sufficient and complete.

The strongest thing a Catholic friend will say: The Church that assembled the Bible has the authority to say when it is finished. If you trust the Bible at all, you are already trusting the same authority that says the canon is closed.

A fair answer: agree that the Bible reached us through real historical processes guided by faithful people, which we do not dispute. Then ask what would need to happen for God to reopen that process the way He apparently did to gather the canon in the first place. If human councils could recognize scripture once, on what basis could they be certain God would never do it again?

Most Protestants hold to sola scriptura, that the sixty-six-book Bible alone is sufficient for faith and practice, and that the canon has been closed since the completion of Revelation, roughly 90–100 A.D. (Westminster Confession, chapter 1). Many also cite Revelation 22:18–19 as a direct warning against any addition to scripture generally.

The strongest thing a Protestant friend will say: Revelation 22:18 could not be clearer: if any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues written in this book.

A fair answer: that warning is addressed explicitly to "this book," meaning Revelation itself, using a stock ancient warning against scribes altering a specific text, the same warning Moses gives about the law in Deuteronomy 4:2 and 12:32, roughly nine hundred years before Revelation was written. If that phrasing forbade any future scripture, the New Testament itself, written centuries after Deuteronomy, could never have been added. The warning protects a text from tampering; it does not close the canon of scripture as a whole, or the Old Testament would have made the New Testament impossible.

Council of Trent, Fourth Session, 1546: the Church "receives and venerates … all the books … with all their parts, as they have been used to be read in the Catholic Church," declaring the canon settled with conciliar authority.

Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter 1, section 2: lists the sixty-six books "given by inspiration of God, to be the rule of faith and life," implying nothing further is needed.

2 Nephi 29:9: "Wherefore murmur ye, because that ye shall receive more of my word?" A rhetorical question aimed directly at the instinct behind both of the above.

The natural pushback: "So you think the Bible isn't enough?" Don't accept that framing. Try: "I think the Bible is true, and I think God loves other nations enough to have spoken to them too. Two witnesses of Christ are stronger than one, not a replacement for one." Then, if it feels right, offer Moroni's promise directly: not an argument to win, but an invitation to test.