Tracking New Testament Study among Latter-day Saints

The exponential growth in New Testament studies written by members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints over the last century calls for an up-to-date survey of the literature. Such can inform both Latter-day Saint and non–Latter-day Saint readers concerning the variety and scope of New Testament scholarship within that tradition. Influential works and trends, primarily from writers in the early twentieth century to those currently writing and publishing, will be highlighted.¹

When the foundations of the modern Church were laid in the 1800s, secular approaches to the Bible were spreading and taking hold in academic and religious institutions of higher learning. Many scholars raised questions concerning the dating and authorship of the texts as well as the reality of people and events in the New Testament through historical criticism, textual criticism, and other developing methodologies. Some previous surveys of Latter-day Saint New Testament scholarship categorized the authors based on their attitudes toward these secular mainstream conclusions.

Philip Barlow’s Mormons and the Bible highlights a range of attitudes—from those who felt there was no value in the secular conclusions (since they often marginalized or bracketed the divine) to those who embraced the secular view fully (convinced by the evidence and argumentation). Some preferred to take a middle path, believing the work of mainstream scholarship can be useful for understanding the text as long as it is used constructively, without rejecting the possibility of divine interaction, such as miracles or revelation.² Anthony A. Hutchinson divided Latter-day Saint authors a little more along this spectrum between fundamentalism, which he calls “harmonizing hermeneutical,” and secular criticism, which he calls “critical hermeneutical.”³ Hutchinson’s use of the term “harmonizing hermeneutical” as the opposite of “critical hermeneutical” is problematic since it makes the a priori assumption that efforts that demonstrate harmony in the texts must not be fully critical. Hutchinson argued that Church members typically gravitated toward fundamentalist writers because such “provides a sense of security . . . : The truth of God appears to have been the same anciently as it is today; there is a uniformity of the gospel that is universal and shared by the Old and New Testaments as well as the LDS scriptures.” Conversely, he states that “the problems of scripture [that critical scholarship raises] are either homogenized into oblivion or ignored as unimportant.”⁴

While clustering Latter-day Saint scholars according to their attitudes toward the conclusions of secular scholarship may be interesting and helpful to some, this kind of categorization often accompanies a tone that is divisive. Those who prefer to examine the scriptures in their claimed provenance or who allow for the possibility of divine interaction, revelation, or uniformity may be portrayed as uncritical apologists or not rigorous (regardless of how carefully they may actually engage the text and its historical-cultural setting or linguistics), while those who embrace the conclusions of secular scholarship, even when it conflicts with the claims of the text or other faith-claims, may be characterized as “more serious” and even “more reverential” toward the text (regardless of how carefully they may actually engage the text and its historical-cultural setting or linguistics).⁵ Conversely, those who value and agree with secular scholarship’s conclusions may be characterized as heretical, especially when they conflict with the claims of the text or faith claims.

While fundamentalist views can indeed be too rigid—preventing one from engaging with difficult questions or considering new perspectives—many Latter-day Saints recognize that uncritically embracing secular approaches that may disqualify divine involvement or too quickly dismiss traditional views is simply another form of rigidness that can also conceal truth in a text. Notwithstanding the problems both extremes create, discerning Latter-day Saints recognize that each side embodies important principles that are relevant to fully understanding a text. In fact, a canonical statement admonishes Latter-day Saints to find balance between these two approaches and “seek learning, even by study and also by faith” (D&C 88:118).

In spite of this admonition, it appears that engagement with many controversial issues raised by secular criticism, such as authorship and dating, has been minimal in much of Latter-day Saint history.⁶ This observation should be tempered by the fact that engagement with secular critical methodologies is often married tightly to secular critical premises.⁷ While the Church’s eighth Article of Faith, which speaks of belief in the Bible “as far as it is translated correctly,” certainly invites participation in critical scholarship, today’s premises put pressure on Latter-day Saint scholars to “bracket” their faith—or adjust and nuance their views on such things as revelation, translation, and other prophetic claims—in order to participate. Such bracketing or adjustments, however, will inherently and inevitably produce vastly different conclusions from those who do not. Voicing this concern, Andrew Skinner stated:

When scholars attempt to peel away the so-called layers, additions, or embellishments from our New Testament text to get at the “real” Jesus, the unembellished or natural Jesus, it strikes one as being a little bit like peeling away the layers of an onion to get at the real onion. Sooner or later one is left with a pile of layers, having set out from the start to miss the real thing or the “essence,” or maybe not even really wanting to see what is there. We can remove the divinity from Jesus, but that is not the real, actual Jesus.⁸

Note that Skinner indicates that such outcomes are the result of efforts by those who “set out from the start” to paint a picture of Christ that is only naturalistic or secular, void of any divine possibility. The path one chooses at the beginning will largely determine how one interprets the evidence and the conclusion at which one arrives.

Due to the narrowness of secular premises, most Latter-day Saint writers have chosen to understand how the Bible relates to and illuminates their own tradition’s foundation of restored truths, not how it might fit into the worldview of secularists. Some might characterize this as “less critical,” but honest appraisals will note that many Latter-day Saint scholars use historical-cultural analysis, linguistics, text variants, and other critical, even secular, methodologies to help them understand the text. Of course, Latter-day Saints could and should become more involved even in the controversial issues of New Testament scholarship. Their voices are needed, but venturing onto such a path is no easy task, since the secular academy (1) has already adopted as “fact” many past conclusions based on some limited evidence and (2) often restricts what is admissible evidence and even how one should read the evidence that is admitted.

Joseph Smith declared, “I beli[e]ve the bible, as it ought to be, as it came from the pen of the original writers.”⁹ So attempting to understand the authorial intent of a scriptural text and avoiding the mere assertion of one’s own interpretation or theology is important to most Latter-day Saints. They believe they have two helpful and complementary avenues to recover original meaning: (1) the historical, cultural, and linguistic tools of scholarship and (2) seership. Latter-day Saint canon indicates that seers “can know of things which are past” (Mosiah 8:17) among other things—that is, they can convey the original meaning of important truths contained in ancient texts, even when scholarship is not possible or available. Since modern Latter-day Saint leaders are accepted as seers for the Church, they have an institutional trust to collectively interpret and preserve important truths in scripture from the past—conveying things as they really were.

This does not mean that Latter-day Saints believe their leaders are individually infallible concerning every detail of history or scripture, but they do trust in their collective wisdom, course corrections, and sense on scriptural matters of importance as given by divine inspiration. For this reason, many Latter-day Saint studies of the New Testament not only engage critical historical, cultural, and linguistic methods for understanding a text but may also include insights and ideas from Church leaders, especially those given by Joseph Smith, in an attempt to balance both study and faith.

Engaging the New Testament critically while maintaining one’s faith perspective should be applauded in the academy because uniquely held Latter-day Saint perspectives on the New Testament contribute to the plurality of views that the secular academy claims to prize. As Latter-day Saint Church leader Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, paraphrasing Harvard’s Jon D. Levenson, declared, “Bracketing one’s faith has more limitations than virtues. Above all, it precludes sharing insights unique to one’s faith, thereby missing the opportunity to enrich the other.”¹⁰ Kent Jackson addressed this concept particularly in the context of New Testament scholarship.¹¹

Seeing that the Latter-day Saint acceptance or nonacceptance of New Testament secular conclusions may cause divisions, we felt it would be more helpful to categorize Latter-day Saint New Testament studies according to the general purposes they aim to accomplish. While there is certainly a variety of ability and engagement with scholarly tools among Latter-day Saint authors, the majority provide unique Latter-day Saint perspectives on the New Testament informed by their greater body of scripture and their faith-informed worldview of God’s plan of salvation for all humankind. The studies highlighted herein include those which focus on (1) the translation and transmission of New Testament texts; (2) the historical and cultural contexts of the New Testament texts; (3) the life and ministry of Jesus Christ, including those that focus particularly on his sermons, parables, miracles, passion, Resurrection, and more; (4) the lives and ministries of other New Testament figures; (5) the relationship of the primitive Church and apostasy to the restored Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; (6) temple and ritual themes in New Testament texts; (7) text-based commentaries; and (8) study guides and harmonies.

Translation and Transmission of New Testament Texts

John K. Carmack explained that while the King James Version (KJV) has traditionally been the preferred translation in Latter-day Saint studies, “any responsibly prepared version could be used and might be helpful to us. It is the doctrine and the teachings in their historical setting which are useful and authoritative to Latter-day Saints.”¹² While the King James translation of the Bible was culturally prominent and familiar to the earliest Latter-day Saints, it was not considered a superior translation in comparison to other translations in circulation during the early years of the Church.¹³ In fact, Joseph Smith on occasion used alternate translations in his sermons and even revised and expanded the KJV texts as part of his early prophetic ministry, believing that no current translation was without error or omission. Joseph Smith even gave a revelation that provided room for members to consider truths contained in the additional books of the Apocrypha that were not included in the KJV of his day.¹⁴

While this openness to alternate texts and translations appeared to persist for the nineteenth and much of the twentieth century, Barlow notes that a strong coalescence around the King James Version grew when the more secular 1952 Revised Standard Version made an appearance.¹⁵ J. Reuben Clark, a member of the Church’s First Presidency, particularly defended the importance of the King James Version in his book Why the King James Version (1956). He offered an in-depth historical analysis of manuscripts and early biblical texts. He charted the translation of the King James Version of the English Bible by citing numerous biblical scholars and manuscript experts and explained the Latter-day Saint preference for this version.¹⁶

During the four-hundredth anniversary of the King James Version of the Bible, Kent P. Jackson published in 2011 a collection of papers reviewing the history of the KJV’s coming forth and its relationship to Joseph Smith’s sermons, revelations, and translation projects as well as some of its reception history within the Church generally.¹⁷ The various authors in this volume note the KJV’s cultural importance to the Church and to the English-speaking world generally, but they also acknowledge the argument of mainstream scholarship that there are better sources than those to which the KJV translators had access and a better understanding of the ancient world in general. Lincoln Blumell’s article “The Text of the New Testament,” Thomas Wayment’s article “The Endings of Mark and Revelation,” and Gaye Strathern’s article “Modern English Bible Translations” particularly address some of these issues. Wayment published a 2023 article that covers much of the same ground as that noted above, with some added discussion of why moving away from the KJV would be rather difficult for English-speaking Latter-day Saints.¹⁸

The same year that Jackson’s book appeared, Blumell published another article that compares the KJV with other modern translations and explains why some verses are substantially different.¹⁹ A similar, though not as extensive, work appeared earlier by Stan Larson.²⁰ Blumell’s study concludes that, based on text-critical issues, in most cases the readings in the King James Version appear to be inferior to those in the more modern translation, but the study also highlights a few instances where the King James Version might actually preserve a better reading. This simply highlights the importance of considering all the sources and evidence and being thorough in one’s research.

Years earlier, Richard Anderson reviewed the New English Bible translation, comparing its paraphrasing translation style to the KJV and typical Latter-day Saint understanding, revealing that in some instances it seems to move further away from Latter-day Saint interpretations (the result of being completed by a committee of Protestant scholars), while in other instances it seems to move closer to Latter-day Saint understanding (such as translating a phrase in 1 Cor. 15:29 as “baptism on behalf of the dead”).²¹

In spite of the cultural supremacy and use of the KJV throughout much of the Church’s history, alternate translations of the New Testament by Latter-day Saints exist. First and foremost is Joseph Smith’s translation of the Bible (JST)—primarily a revision work of the KJV that he viewed as part of his prophetic ministry to restore and provide a more accurate translation of that scripture to the world. The Prophet’s complete project was first published in 1867 by the Community of Christ (formerly the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) and was formally adopted by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as supplemental material in their 1979 English publication of the Bible.²² Scott Faulring, Kent Jackson, and Robert J. Matthews published the foundation work on the original manuscripts of this project.²³

The prominent publications regarding the JST of the New Testament have focused primarily on the history of its creation and the doctrinal insights Joseph Smith’s revisions and expansions provide, including some that explore whether the JST more accurately reflects what is known from ancient New Testament texts and scholarship today.²⁴ Although Joseph Smith claimed his translation revisions came from divine inspiration, some have attempted to connect them to contemporary sources.²⁵ The most substantial attempt to date is Thomas Wayment and Haley Wilson-Lemmon’s work that draws parallels between Joseph Smith’s revisions and a popular contemporary Bible commentary.²⁶ Kent Jackson published a careful rebuttal effectively dismantling the certainty of Wayment and Wilson-Lemmon’s claims, leaving the question open concerning the source of Joseph Smith’s Bible translation ideas.²⁷ Jackson provides a more detailed analysis of the coming forth of the Joseph Smith Translation in his Understanding Joseph Smith’s Translation of the Bible.²⁸

In non-English-speaking countries, the Church approves and relies primarily on other translations of the Bible—the two exceptions being LDS editions of Spanish and Portuguese Bibles. The 2009 Santa Biblia is based on the 1909 Reina-Valera translation, and the 2015 Portuguese-language Bible is based on the 1914 edition of João Ferreira de Almeida’s translation. Both translations have modernized grammar and vocabulary and include unique Latter-day Saint footnotes, chapter headings, and indexes.

James Faulconer provided a verse-by-verse translation of Romans chapter 1, which he later expanded to include a few more chapters.²⁹ His studies include the KJV side by side with his own alternate translation based on The Greek New Testament, fourth edition.³⁰

A large-scale effort by Latter-day Saints scholars to produce a contemporary English translation of the entire New Testament is the Brigham Young University (BYU) New Testament Commentary series, of which this volume is a part, being published through BYU Studies. This multiyear, multivolume project was initially proposed to the BYU administration in 2002 by John W. Welch and S. Kent Brown and seeks to make the language and idioms of the New Testament more accessible to their readers.

Following standard formats of academic ventures similar to this one, each volume produces a new translation of the Greek (primarily based upon the Greek text published by the Society of Biblical Literature [2010] or the twenty-eighth edition of the Nestle-Aland text in Novum Testamentum Graece [2012]), complete with translation notes and textual variations, as well as commentary. Partly out of respect to the Church’s official support for the KJV, this project includes the KJV translation in parallel columns with the “New Rendition” each author provides.

The authors of these volumes engage text-critical issues raised in secular scholarship to varying degrees. Reviewers claim that some have not engaged enough views opposing traditional understandings or contradicting explicit and implicit claims in other Latter-day Saint scripture.³¹ Julie Smith’s commentary on the Gospel of Mark, on the other hand, fully embraces the popular scholarly view, based on some convincing evidence to be sure, that post-Resurrection appearances and teachings of Christ at the end of Mark (16:9–20) are not original to the text but a later addition.³² She does not engage the cogent arguments in the academy supporting the original ending.³³ As a result, Smith does not provide any translation nor commentary for the ending of Mark, similar to other modern translations and commentaries. Lack of full engagement with the textual issues, both for or against, should not overshadow the other value and insights these works contain.³⁴

Concurrent with the rollout of the BYU New Testament Commentary series, a little-known effort to provide a translation with notes of 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, and Philemon was published by William Blacoe.³⁵ Additionally, a single-volume modern English translation of the entire New Testament “for Latter-day Saints” was published by BYU professor Thomas Wayment in 2018 (revised in 2022).³⁶ The introductory material for each New Testament book in Wayment’s volume is minimal but includes information about manuscripts, structure, and themes. The substantial notes indicate variant readings, textual allusions, brief commentary, and more.

A few Latter-day Saint scholars address the main issues related to New Testament textual criticism, mostly written for lay members of the Church.³⁷ Some address the friction that can occur when a text’s originality is called into question and the same text appears in Latter-day Saint scripture and revelation. A few scholars in recent years, most notably Thomas Wayment and Lincoln Blumell, have engaged the academic discourse concerning text-critical arguments and published New Testament texts appearing in various Christian sources from antiquity.³⁸

New Testament word studies by Latter-day Saints have also appeared. Richard Draper provided a study of the New Testament usage of the word hypókrisis, “hypocrisy.”³⁹ Brent Schmidt has published important monograph contributions on the meaning of charis, “grace,” and pistis, “faith,” in the New Testament, demonstrating that they originally included notions of covenantal obligation.⁴⁰

The New Testament’s shared phraseology and ideas with other Latter-day Saint scripture is a unique area that some scholars have also explored.⁴¹ Due to such similarities, some work from the assumption that the New Testament must have had a direct influence on the formation of those texts that Joseph Smith claimed to translate from ancient sources. However, additional reasons for the commonalities should not be dismissed, including earlier traditions or common phraseology influencing both the New Testament world and those in Joseph Smith’s translations.

Historical and Cultural Context

Some works in Latter-day Saint New Testament scholarship focus primarily on the historical and cultural context of the New Testament world rather than the text itself. A volume titled Bible Lands, published by the Church in 1986, is a good example.⁴² It features maps and photographs from the ground and air (including some from space) of major Bible locations as well as commentary for the photos.

D. Kelly Ogden’s Where Jesus Walked: The Land and Culture of New Testament Times sought to “identify all things geographical in the teachings of Jesus and the early apostles and to elucidate not only their surface meaning but also their deeper meaning—how some object or condition in the land of Jesus is comparable to human conduct or character.”⁴³ The photos in this volume feature landscapes, objects, flora, and fauna that specifically inform the teachings found in the New Testament.

John F. Hall and John W. Welch’s Masada and the World of the New Testament reconstruct the setting of the New Testament with the intent “to take readers back into the first-century world of Herod, Josephus, Peter, and Jesus.”⁴⁴ This dedicated volume of the BYU Studies periodical provides political, legal, literary, economic, agricultural, cultural, and other background for the New Testament’s Herodian age leading up to the Jewish last stand at Masada.

Richard Neitzel Holzapfel, Eric Huntsman, and Thomas A. Wayment produced an oversized, full-color illustrated reference called Jesus and the World of the New Testament. The volume is filled with illustrations, maps, charts, diagrams, photos of artifacts, buildings, and locations, and more. The information is presented in a chronological fashion beginning with the intertestamental period, continuing through the ministry of Christ, and concluding with the earlier and later ministries of the Apostles.

Kent Jackson edited a volume of contributions highlighting the Near Eastern background of the Bible, including a section on the New Testament.⁴⁵ This book was created primarily for use by Brigham Young University’s Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies and focuses principally on those cultures and political entities of the ancient Near East that intersect with the biblical text. A more comprehensive collection of articles on New Testament background is New Testament History, Culture, and Society, edited by Lincoln Blumell.⁴⁶ In addition to the standard political and religious landscape, this volume provides more details with respect to manuscripts, authorship, and dating, as well as social studies regarding women, marriage, family, ritual, textiles, and more.

Most recently, Brigham Young University’s symposium volume The Household of God focuses specifically on the social background of the family in the New Testament.⁴⁷ Some studies in this volume looked at the social structure of families relative to New Testament teachings, including issues of marriage, divorce, polygamy, and sexual minorities, while others focus on the use of family or family relationships as symbols in the New Testament.

The Life and Ministry of Jesus Christ

While some may conclude that Latter-day Saints are not Christian—primarily due to their rejection of the conclusions that postapostolic ecumenical councils made concerning the nature of the Godhead (for example, that Christ and his Father are of the same substance) and the trinitarian doctrine that grew out of such—they do believe strongly that Jesus is the Son of God, the Messiah, and central to God’s plan of salvation for the world. Consequently, a large portion of Latter-day Saint studies concerning the New Testament have focused on his life and ministry.⁴⁸ Two Christ-centered works that have greatly influenced New Testament scholarship within the Church generally are those by Elder James E. Talmage and Elder Bruce R. McConkie. They are among the most widely read and frequently cited scholars with respect to the life and teachings of Jesus Christ.

Talmage’s book Jesus the Christ (1915) represents one of the first major scholarly efforts to understand the life, doctrines, and teachings of Jesus Christ in the New Testament.⁴⁹ Many post-Talmage New Testament scholarship finds roots in this book, his pinnacle work. The members of the First Presidency of the Church commissioned Talmage to write Jesus the Christ and reviewed it before its publication as well. This eight-hundred-plus-page work is divided into forty-two chapters that direct light upon the antemortal through the millennial Jesus Christ, dissecting the entire broad mission of Christ and working chronologically through the New Testament account. Talmage also addressed the report of Christ’s appearance to certain of the ancient American peoples in the Book of Mormon.

Talmage’s intent with Jesus the Christ was to testify of and underscore the Savior’s divine ministry through a careful analysis of his life and teachings, with a heavy emphasis on the validity of the restored Church today. His analysis was largely based on the scriptures themselves; a great part of the text framed his own rendering of each event or teaching from the life of Christ. He also addressed cultural, religious, political, and social conditions at the time of Christ, and this analysis incorporated various tools: linguistic, historic, literary, archaeological, cultural, contextual, and prayerful research. Many such applications can be found in the footnotes, where he explained a Greek word’s origin, defined a Jewish biblical practice, or brought forward the significance of a geographical location. He frequently synthesized various teachings, events, and principles from the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Old and New Testaments. His nonscriptural sources were mostly Protestant and historical; he drew regularly from the works of Edersheim, Farrar, Geike, and Josephus.

In his endnotes and inside his text, Talmage made little distinction between scholarship, scripture, testimony, personal insight, and other Latter-day Saint commentary. His research was thorough but not necessarily unbiased in trying to fulfill his intent. He often cited heavily from one scholar for a particular section and wrote conclusively, leaving the reader with little doubt that he himself believed his work to be settled. While reading his works, one senses his strong personal voice. Like his other writings, his tone is thoroughly Latter-day Saint, filled with testimony and personal insights. Although not officially endorsed as Church doctrine, Jesus the Christ is included in the approved reading for Church missionaries and is generally accepted as authoritative.

In his four-volume series, The Mortal Messiah, McConkie followed a New Testament harmony of events in Christ’s life, emphasizing his divine roles and identity as Son of God rather than just providing a verse-by-verse commentary. In the preface to the first volume, McConkie called Talmage one of his “most prominent predecessors”⁵⁰ and acknowledged Jesus the Christ as the foundation for his own series. Each volume of McConkie’s series is divided into thirty or more chapters covering any topic pertaining to the life of Christ, from living circumstances in Jerusalem to Jewish worship. He included in his portrayal many passages from other Latter-day Saint scripture that influenced his interpretation of New Testament passages.

He openly favored Protestant scholarship and relied on the same biblical commentators as Talmage did—Edersheim, Farrar, and Geike. His approach incorporated academic tools and intellectual investigation, but his overwhelming emphasis was on doctrinal interpretations and implications for personal conduct and faith. He was cautious with and critical of scholarly writing that, in his view, was a form of higher criticism driven by secular interests. Additionally, he used Latter-day Saint scripture to illuminate the nature of the Bible and its teachings. Like Talmage, his goal was to testify and persuade the reader to believe. Thus his writing is laced with personal, spiritual feelings and thoughts.

McConkie appreciated the value of studying the language, customs, traditions, and lifestyle of those in the New Testament to aid efforts in determining the intent and meaning of the message; however, he clearly defended the power of the Holy Ghost as the principal aid in understanding scripture. The personal, spiritual influences of the Holy Ghost ultimately override all scholarly research in McConkie’s writing. His audience is primarily Latter-day Saints but includes any with open hearts and the desire or intent to believe. He showed his personal style and commitment to Latter-day Saint doctrines with phrases such as “taking our cues and quotations from Edersheim, but tempering his views with the added light and knowledge revealed” and others.⁵¹ These types of phrases brought his works into a critical light from non–Latter-day Saint reviewers. Nonetheless, McConkie is always respected for the sheer volume of his works and his rigorous publication quota.

In 1990, Obert C. Tanner with coauthors Lewis M. Rogers and Sterling M. McMurrin revised and expanded earlier works that Tanner had created for the Church’s Education Department and produced Toward Understanding the New Testament. The authors emphasized the accounts in the Gospels, devoting eleven chapters to the life of Christ (the Gospels) and five chapters to the Epistles. They rely heavily on contemporary scholarship and “agree with those historians who hold the now common view that the Gospels have seriously distorted the picture of Judaism at the time of Jesus.”⁵² They provide nuanced views of the texts, highlighting what they believe are different theologies and prejudices of each writer.

Other works that sought to provide a holistic view of the life and ministry of Jesus Christ primarily through the New Testament include W. Cleon Skousen’s Days of the Living Christ.⁵³ Skousen provides some background material in his introduction and then mostly creates a narrative of the Gospels interlaced with cultural or intertextual insights and speculations. David Ridges provides a similar approach, though his narrative is interlaced frequently with large quotations from the Gospel writers and the Joseph Smith Translation; most background material comes from the LDS Bible Dictionary. Another volume by James W. McConkie and Judith E. McConkie attempts to reconstruct a historical Jesus through the lens of his interactions with various individuals and institutions in the New Testament: “The aim is to put Jesus within the context of his own times using historical methods that place emphasis on primary sources.”⁵⁴ A volume featuring the stain-glass art of Tom Holdman and Holdman Studios contains several insights on the life and teachings of Christ through New Testament passages.⁵⁵

In addition, some Brigham Young University symposia proceedings have been published that focused wholly on the life and ministry of Christ. These include studies on such things as Jesus’ premortality; his roles as teacher, prophet, priest, and king; his trial, Crucifixion, and Resurrection; reception history; and the Christology found in various books of the New Testament and in the Joseph Smith Translation.⁵⁶ Like the symposia proceedings, Thomas Wayment and Richard Holzapfel’s three-volume series, entitled The Life and Teachings of Jesus Christ, provides a collection of scholarly essays, chiefly from Brigham Young University professors of religion, concerning the background and various aspects of Jesus Christ’s ministry.⁵⁷ Andrew C. Skinner’s introductory essay in the third volume mentions that a purpose of this work was to answer “the charges of critics and secular scholars who would try to persuade us that Jesus was not the literal Son of God, the actual Redeemer of all humankind, or that the New Testament accounts that report the last hours and acts of Jesus cannot be trusted as literal.”⁵⁸

Many Latter-day Saint studies focus on specific aspects of Jesus’ ministry—such as his birth, his last week, his miracles, his parables, his Sermon on the Mount, or his prophecies. Several studies over the decades address the timing of Jesus’ birth.⁵⁹ A traditional explanation is that it was April 6 due to a seeming commemoration passage given in connection with the modern Latter-day Saint Church being formally established on April 6, 1830 (see D&C 20:1); however, this interpretation is uncertain. Other studies focus on prophecies, culture, and witnesses of the Nativity.⁶⁰

Studies focusing on the suffering, death, and Resurrection of Christ’s final week include Richard Holzapfel’s A Lively Hope: The Suffering, Death, Resurrection, and Exaltation of Jesus Christ, with an objective “to introduce to a nonspecialist readership some of the insights from recent New Testament research that may benefit the believer and help him or her gain a deeper appreciation for the richness of the narratives left to us as a gift from the writers of the four Gospels.”⁶¹ His book is divided into two main parts, which separate the passion and Resurrection narratives as told from the perspective of each Gospel writer—paying particular attention to the intended audiences of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Holzapfel’s research draws on mainstream academic sources. He incorporates historical background information and Greek translations of some words, but his emphasis lies on the events themselves as depicted by the different writers.

Jeffrey Marsh’s His Final Hours is more application driven, seeking to help the reader obtain “insights about life that can be drawn from the final hours of the Savior’s life and atoning sacrifice.”⁶² Similar to Holzapfel’s approach, Andrew C. Skinner’s three-volume series on the Savior’s last week analyzes the details surrounding the suffering, death, Crucifixion, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, providing in-depth personal insights and analysis but also historical detail, word origins, and textual explanations.⁶³ Eric D. Huntsman’s God So Loved the World organizes the details of the final week by day. The volume includes art and music that celebrate those moments as well.

Over the last decade, BYU’s Religious Studies Center has published the proceedings of an annual Easter conference held at the university. Each focus on various aspects of the Savior’s last week, ranging from historical contexts to devotional meaning.⁶⁴

Most publications concerning Jesus’ parables focus on understanding the meaning of the text through historical or cultural analysis; some also suggest allegorical and moral interpretations to make the parables more relevant to the reader.⁶⁵ John Welch’s approach to the parables has set him apart from most of the others by focusing on their anagogical meaning relative to the Latter-day Saints’ unique understanding of God’s plan of salvation.⁶⁶ Similar to Welch’s approach, a volume of collected papers published in 2007 explores the relationship of the parables specifically to the Atonement of Jesus Christ.⁶⁷ A few unique articles include Steven Harper’s work on the relationship of the parable of the rich man and Lazarus to the law of consecration in one of Joseph Smith’s revelations and Thomas Wayment’s analysis concerning the names of the parables.⁶⁸

Similar to the parables, scholarly studies concerning Jesus’ miracles focus on the historical or cultural background and understanding the text.⁶⁹ Most Latter-day Saints are open to the historical possibility of miracles (see Moro. 7:27–29, 37), so they do not view them only as metaphor. However, the possibility that literal miracles can still be symbolic is also explored in the literature in order to draw additional meaning and personal application.⁷⁰

Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount has received much attention over the last several decades. Leland Monson’s monograph characterizes it mainly as an announcement of a higher law and seeks to provide a better “understanding of the relationship of the law and the prophets to the Sermon on the Mount.”⁷¹ In opposition to secular biblical scholars who view the sermon as a late editorial that stitched together random sayings of Jesus, John Welch demonstrates that the entire text can be seen as a unified whole relating to the temple.⁷² Robert A. Cloward dismisses both Monson’s and Welch’s theses in favor of viewing the sermon as a missionary preparation.⁷³ However, temples and missionaries teach, arguably, the same concepts: God’s path of salvation through a series of covenants and rites that bind the believer to both lesser and higher laws and ways of life. Consequently, the ideas presented by these three scholars are not mutually exclusive. An entire BYU symposium focused on the sermon, and the published proceedings provide insight into the sociocultural context in which it was given, the sources for many of Jesus’ teachings, and the various phrases within the sermon.⁷⁴

Richard D. Draper’s The Savior’s Prophecies focuses on “specific historical events the Savior predicted just a few days before His Crucifixion, as He sat on the Mount of Olives,” as recorded in Matthew 24.⁷⁵ The intent is to help readers learn that many of these events are already fulfilled and to prepare for the Second Coming.

The Lives and Ministries of Other New Testament Figures

Apart from the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, Latter-day Saint scholars have focused some of their studies on other prominent men and women in the New Testament. Those which focus on the texts such individuals may have created are categorized under “Text Commentaries” below.

Robert J. Matthews, a former dean of Religious Education at BYU, wrote a study on John the Baptist. Matthews intended that A Burning Light: The Life and Ministry of John the Baptist (1972) would “cultivate a wider knowledge and a greater appreciation for” the Baptist and increase awareness of his “ministry in three dispensations of the gospel, in light of latter-day revelation, which gives a fuller view and a more complete knowledge than can be obtained from the Bible alone.”⁷⁶ Matthews referenced multiple Bibles and made cross-textual comparisons to explore the life and ministry of John. He relied heavily on Latter-day Saint sources, adopting dates and chronological references from J. Reuben Clark’s Gospel harmony. Like Clark, he was not especially concerned with accuracy of dates that may have proved challenging. On the historical context of John the Baptist’s death, see Cecilia Peek’s article “The Death of John the Baptist.”⁷⁷

Volumes that focus primarily on the lives and teachings of various Apostles include Franklin L. West’s The Apostles and the Primitive Church (1964).⁷⁸ West provides a narrative approach to the New Testament lives and ministry of the Apostles. Scattered throughout his narrative are frequent quotes of New Testament passages that highlight certain doctrines and practices in the early Church. Go Ye into All the World is a collection of articles from BYU’s Sperry Symposium that primarily explores the witnesses, teachings, and background of the New Testament Apostles after the Resurrection of Jesus.⁷⁹ A few of the articles focus on the church community in that age as well. John F. Hall’s New Testament Witnesses of Christ: Peter, John, James, and Paul presents to his readers a well-researched historical and cultural background to the titular Apostles’ ministries. His writing, in part, responds to “modern sectarian misunderstanding of apostolic authority and function, as well as to counter hypercritical scholarly technique that calls into question the authority of Peter, John, James, and Paul, and variously challenges their authorship of certain works of scripture by tradition long attributed to them.”⁸⁰

A volume of collected conference papers that focus on the life and ministry of the Apostle John and then a volume on Peter were published in 1998 and 2014, respectively.⁸¹ Each volume explores the historical and cultural background and biographical notes of each Apostle as well as the thematic teachings contained in their writings. Frank Judd and Terrence Szink also produced a paper focusing on a lost writing of John the Beloved in a modern Latter-day Saint revelation.⁸²

An influential scholar of the Church who made major contributions regarding the life of the Apostle Paul was Sidney B. Sperry (1895–1977).⁸³ Drawing upon biblical scholarship, Sperry’s Paul’s Life and Letters chronologically addresses Paul’s life events and writings. He takes a careful historical approach in attempting to illuminate background, conditions, and circumstances of the Apostle’s life. His focus was not linguistic, although he occasionally referred to the meaning of Greek words. He incorporated little modern-day revelation or writings specific to the restored Church, but Sperry kept his Latter-day Saint audience in mind in his bibliography of sources by including warnings and personal comments regarding each source.⁸⁴

More than fifty years later, Thomas Wayment published another biography of Paul.⁸⁵ His approach is very similar to Sperry’s volume, organizing the details of Paul’s life and letters chronologically to provide historical and cultural background as he moves through time. Of course, Wayment has the advantage of fifty additional years of research to inform his writing. An earlier volume by Edwin Firmage explored the life and teachings of Paul in order to draw out principles of missionary work.⁸⁶ William Blacoe also produced a biography of Paul that is heavier on historical background and movement.⁸⁷

A BYU Sperry Symposium dedicated to the life of Paul focuses on Paul’s character and thematic teachings rather than on a chronological tracking of his travels and teachings.⁸⁸ The authors provide historical background and context along with references to Greek and Hebrew word origins, indicating an intent to convey the text accurately.

Several works focusing on women in the New Testament have been published in recent decades. One of the earliest is Jeni Holzapfel and Richard Holzapfel’s Sisters at the Well.⁸⁹ Their volume begins with the cultural and historical background of women in the Greco-Roman world, including everyday life—birth, transition from childhood to womanhood, marriage, and family—and the view of women in the four Gospels. The woman in Jesus’ genealogy, the women in Jesus’ teachings, and the women with whom Jesus interacts are also highlighted.

Camille Olson’s Women of the New Testament goes beyond the Holzapfels’ work by including the women throughout the entire New Testament, not just those that interacted with Jesus Christ.⁹⁰ Her study generally organizes the women according to their ethnic backgrounds—that is, Jewish, Samaritan, and Greco-Roman—but provides additional highlights for those in the Roman and Jewish aristocracy as well as those in Christ’s lineage. Like the Holzapfels’, Olson’s work includes historical and cultural background of women in the New Testament world but also adds interesting historical facts about some of the women’s lives beyond the New Testament when extrabiblical sources allow. Olson also penned earlier works that focused on Mary and Martha of Bethany, Mary the mother of Jesus, and those women who interacted with the Savior with respect to his power over death.⁹¹

Other studies of note include Susan Easton-Black and Alan Parish’s work deriving principles of Christian discipleship from the example of various women in the New Testament, some in comparison to women in modern Church history.⁹² Sherrie Mills Johnson and Camille Fronk Olson investigate the equality of women and men in the teachings of Paul in 1 Corinthians, rather than seeing women as subordinates to men.⁹³ S. Kent Brown’s focused study of Mary and Elizabeth provides detail into the lives of these women through the culture and history of home, marriage, Bethlehem, and a careful reading of the New Testament texts. Catherine Taylor explores the archetypal role various women of the New Testament held in the Christian community.⁹⁴

The Primitive Church and Apostasy

One of the more unique contributions Latter-day Saints have made to New Testament studies generally is their scholarship attempting to demonstrate that the early Christian Church established by Jesus and his Apostles did not last very long but was corrupted and lost, necessitating a restoration of authority, rituals, covenants, laws, and doctrines that Latter-day Saints claim began with Joseph Smith. Ironically, this is an area in which the ideas of Latter-day Saints and many secular scholars converge as studies concerning changes to scripture, doctrines, and practices of the early Church have increased in the academic world.

Gordon Irving’s 1973 article “Mormons and the Bible in the 1830s” (based on his 1972 University of Utah honors thesis) aggregates many of the earliest Latter-day Saint writings relative to the New Testament and recognizes that a prominent approach in these early writings was to outline the organization, practices, and basic doctrines that characterized the Church Jesus Christ organized; demonstrate that Jesus and his Apostles predicted an apostasy or falling away from these ideals; and show that these ideals have been restored in the Church that Joseph Smith organized.⁹⁵ Such an approach was central to early missionary efforts: “The journals of many converts show that they were seeking a common sense church which followed the New Testament pattern.”⁹⁶

Approaches linking the structure and teachings of the New Testament Church to the modern Church have remained a constant in Latter-day Saint scholarship since these early years. B. H. Roberts’s Outlines of Ecclesiastical History (1902) is an extensive systematic work that reviews New Testament details concerning Jesus and his Apostles’ establishment of the Church doctrines and practices in their day, the later Apostasy or falling away from those doctrines and organization, and the Restoration of the same doctrines and practices through Joseph Smith in modern times. James Talmage’s The Great Apostasy (1909) similarly provides a brief outline on the establishment of the New Testament Church but then focuses on various causes of apostasy (both external and internal) that corrupted its original teachings, practices, and organization.

Most of the historical evidence for apostasy in these earlier Latter-day Saint publications drew upon prevailing Protestant, or anti-Catholic, scholarship, which focused primarily on late-Christian and medieval sources that demonstrate Catholic corruption of doctrine and practices. Since that time, earlier manuscripts have come forth, giving a better view and understanding of the earliest periods of Christianity. Hugh Nibley demonstrates in these earliest sources that Jesus and the early Christians did not anticipate that the Church they founded would survive very long. Nibley further addresses the paucity of evidence for those who claim it did.⁹⁷

Kent Jackson’s 1996 monograph, primarily written for nonspecialists, provides broad outlines of strife and doctrinal drift the Apostles were attempting to correct as found mostly in New Testament passages. He also sketches a few major figures and church councils in the post-apostolic era before moving on to the bulk of the book, which focuses on the events of Joseph Smith’s day.

Barry Bickmore’s Restoring the Ancient Church identifies several key doctrines and practices of the modern Church and demonstrates their presence in the New Testament and earliest Christian sources while highlighting any historical conflicts that existed over specific issues.⁹⁸ Similar approaches are taken in Scott Peterson’s and Tad Callister’s works.⁹⁹ Jared Ludlow explored similarities of historical events, rather than beliefs and practices, that the early and modern Church experienced in their initial growth periods.¹⁰⁰

Daniel Graham and James Siebach produced an important study demonstrating that the assumption that Greek philosophy caused early Christian apostasy is unclear from the sources. Rather, the growing influence of philosophical ideas in early Christianity may have been an effect of apostasy.¹⁰¹

Grant Underwood expresses caution when interpreting what it means for the modern Church to be the “same” as the primitive Church.¹⁰² However, he explores how there is sameness if one does not get too focused on just the nomenclature of offices but rather some specific functions of the organization that the early and the modern Church share.

Taylor Petrey’s article goes beyond Underwood’s caution, noted above, by advocating for approaches that (1) abandon any notion that early Christianity was a homogenous, “pure” religion before the Apostasy and focus more on its hybridity and (2) seek to make complete comparisons (including differences) more than just highlighting parallels between the early and the modern Church.¹⁰³ Petrey interprets the lack of pure hegemony in the ancient Church and some of Joseph Smith’s statements as indicating their willingness to simply embrace multiple, even conflicting, viewpoints within the body of the Church and suggests this should be a model for the Church today. He does not, however, explain why the early Apostles were constantly correcting misunderstandings and false doctrines among the Saints through their letters, nor does he explain why Joseph Smith had many doctrinal revelations ratified as standards within the Church and constantly corrected modern Saints who overstepped their bounds of authority or claimed to receive revelation for the Church if hybridity was truly embraced.

Early Christians in Disarray, edited by Noel Reynolds, is a collection of articles that, like Nibley’s work, considers broader scholarship as well as newly discovered manuscripts from the first Christian centuries in order to explore causes and timing of the Apostasy with greater accuracy.¹⁰⁴ James Faulconer’s article in this volume looks specifically at the meaning of the term “apostasy” in the New Testament, concluding that it drew upon its usage in the Greek Old Testament and meant “not only a rebellion against God, but specifically rebellion that rejects priesthood service, a service that was, in early Christianity, best revealed in temple priesthood and ordinances [that is, in covenants].”¹⁰⁵

Daniel Belnap outlines a pattern from the teachings of Jesus concerning actions that led to apostasy in order to reveal similar patterns among early Christians reflected in the letters of Paul, Peter, and John as well as among those in the Book of Mormon who fell away.¹⁰⁶

Kent Jackson published two articles analyzing several New Testament passages that predicted an Apostasy would occur within the early Church and then outlined evidence for such during and after the apostolic age.¹⁰⁷ A separate study by Gaye Strathearn focuses specifically on the doctrinal drift occurring in the early Christian Church concerning the nature of the body with its ramifications on the understanding of resurrection.¹⁰⁸

Miranda Wilcox and John D. Young’s collection of essays positions itself as an “academic perspective” on the Apostasy, in contrast to Latter-day Saint “leaders and apologists” who have dominated the cultural conversation.¹⁰⁹ Laying aside concerns of scholarly hubris from such labeling and disregard for the many leaders and apologists who happen to be academically trained as well, the volume does provide some helpful adjustments to apostasy narratives often heard among Church members.

In the wake of the Wilcox volume, Nicholas Frederick and Joseph Spencer suggest, based on their reading of the Book of Mormon, an additional way to interpret apostasy as Christian neglect and misunderstanding of their relationship to covenantal Israel.¹¹⁰ Gregor McHardy also published a book directly challenging some standard apostasy narratives heard among Church members.¹¹¹

Temple and Ritual Studies

Long-standing Latter-day Saint practices of temple worship and ritual covenant-making have propelled some scholars to examine these areas of study relative to the New Testament. Such tend to focus on early Christian connections to a secret tradition or temple worship, specific rites in early Christianity, or temple themes and structure in New Testament texts. Hugh Nibley is arguably the most influential scholar for this type of approach. His works on temples generally and on early Christian relations to the temple, prayer circles, baptism for the dead, and ritual vestments in numerous sources specifically have laid a foundation upon which many scholars have built.¹¹²

The general importance of the temple to the earliest Christians based on New Testament texts is addressed by S. Kent Brown.¹¹³ William Hamblin explored the possible existence of a sequence of early Christian initiation rites established by Jesus himself, as reflected in the writings of Clement of Alexandria.¹¹⁴ Additional evidence for Christian baptism for the dead and ritual prayer was outlined by John Tvedtnes, Daniel Sharp, and Kevin Barney.¹¹⁵ Sharp and Barney also review scholarly literature that questions the practice of baptism for the dead among early Christians and demonstrate from a linguistic perspective how such arguments fall short. Other ritual practices in New Testament texts, such as ritual handclasps and embraces, prokynesis, anointing, standing in temples, baptism, and the Lord’s Supper, are also explored.¹¹⁶

Paying particular attention to subtleties of language, noting Greek word origins and alternate translations, John Welch’s monograph on the Sermon on the Mount specifically explores the temple themes and possible rites it reflects.¹¹⁷ This largely grew out of an earlier study wherein a similar sermon appears explicitly in a temple context within the Book of Mormon.¹¹⁸ Welch also compared the account in the Book of Mormon to early Greek copies of the New Testament, showing how it parallels and, in some cases, is more accurate than the current King James Version in Matthew.

Temple themes in the Gospel of Mark, the letter to the Hebrews, the Epistles of Peter, and the book of Revelation are highlighted in studies by Jasmin Rappleye, Catherine Thomas, Daniel McKinlay, Richard Draper, and Donald Parry, respectively.¹¹⁹ The possible relationship of the Gospel of John’s entire structure to the progression of the temple is explored by John Thompson.¹²⁰

Text Commentaries

One of the larger categories of Latter-day Saint New Testament publications are commentaries that focus on explaining the meaning of the texts themselves. The great majority of these are written with lay members of the Church in mind. Many weave historical, cultural, and linguistic information into the commentaries in an attempt to recapture the original meaning of the text. Most also provide unique insights into the text that additional Latter-day Saint scripture and modern prophetic voices, especially Joseph Smith’s, might add. Text commentaries usually come in two main varieties: verse-by-verse commentaries and article-length analyses of texts.

Verse-by-Verse Commentaries. One of the most influential verse-by-verse New Testament commentaries for many decades was Bruce R. McConkie’s first personal major work on the New Testament entitled Doctrinal New Testament Commentary.¹²¹ In the explanation of the first volume of the set covering the four Gospels (the other two volumes cover Acts to Philippians and Colossians to Revelation, respectively), McConkie spelled out a three-step key for interpreting scripture, specifically the New Testament. First, one must search and read the text diligently; second, one must listen to the counsel from modern-day prophets and inspired leaders; and third, one must live worthy to have the Holy Spirit aid in understanding. This pattern offered a guide for his writing and for his expectations of the reader.¹²² In each volume of commentary, McConkie followed the New Testament chronologically, offering doctrinal explanations after every few verses. Most of his commentary comes directly from other scripture, including the Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants, or other valid sources for Church doctrine. For example, he defines the “light” that came into the world mentioned in John 1:9 as the light of Christ given to every individual by referring to scriptures in the Doctrine and Covenants and the Book of Mormon.¹²³

Religious scholar Daniel Ludlow wrote a series of verse-by-verse commentaries for Latter-day Saints on all the standard works of the Church. His commentary on the New Testament only included a volume on the four Gospels.¹²⁴ Appealing to his Greek language background, Ludlow largely focused on language issues, including an alternate translation of words in most verses cited.

Heavily influenced by McConkie’s commentary and Edersheim’s work on historical and cultural context, Keith Howick’s thematic commentaries provide insight into the mission, parables, sermons, and miracles of Jesus.¹²⁵

Kelly Ogden and Andrew C. Skinner published a verse-by-verse commentary of Acts through Revelation called New Testament Apostles Testify of Christ.¹²⁶ It was later retitled as part of a two-volume series on the complete New Testament.¹²⁷ These volumes are filled with word origins, historical background, photographs from the Holy Land, and other Latter-day Saint scriptural references. The four-hundred-page book reads like a reference work, with a chapter devoted to each book in the New Testament, starting with the book of Acts.

Given Latter-day millenarian roots, several verse-by-verse commentaries of the apocalyptic Revelation of John appear. BYU ancient scripture professor Richard D. Draper carefully analyzed the Latter-day Saint perspective of John’s Apocalypse in his Opening the Seven Seals: The Visions of John the Revelator. He saw the need “for a clear analysis, using insights from modern scripture and prophetic utterance, of [the book of Revelation].”¹²⁸ Draper first set out the historical context and then explained the setting for the receipt of the Revelation, also including comments from modern-day scripture and prophets about the importance of reading and understanding the book. He then analyzed all twenty-two chapters from Revelation, discussing meanings and interpretations. He incorporated Greek translations of multiple words to aid in understanding their meaning. He frequently cited Bruce R. McConkie’s Doctrinal New Testament Commentary but also added references to many other biblical scholarship writers. Mick Smith’s The Book of Revelation: Plain, Pure, and Simple presented commentary on the book of Revelation that is understandable and accessible to every type of reader. His intent was to help “clarify hard-to-understand terms and phrases in a manner that is accessible to the general membership of the Church.”¹²⁹ The same year, Jay A. Parry and Donald W. Parry published Understanding the Book of Revelation, another verse-by-verse commentary. Like Smith, the Parrys focus their commentary on helping lay members better understand the book of Revelation. The Parrys’ desire was “to find meaning in John’s vision for our day, to seek to understand what people in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries might need or want to know about what John saw and heard.”¹³⁰ Their book was based on scholarship and careful research (Greek word origins and historical sources) but is not academic reading. They were careful and analytical in their undertaking and cited frequently both Latter-day Saint and non–Latter-day Saint sources. David Ridges published an edition of his commentary series entitled The Book of Revelation Made Easier.¹³¹

Faulconer provided a verse-by-verse commentary to accompany his translation of Romans chapter 1 and expanded it to include a few more chapters later.¹³² His hope in writing was to help any Latter-day Saint “understand Paul’s message . . . [and] to show that Paul preaches the same gospel taught by all the prophets.” His approach makes a careful reading of the text, highlighting nuances others may have missed, but his intention was mainly to “stimulate thinking and conversation about Romans, not to bring that thinking and conversation to an end by offering oracular or definitive pronouncements about what Paul’s letter means.”¹³³

David Ridges’s popular series includes a two-volume set entitled The New Testament Made Easier, first published in 2002 and updated to a three-volume set in 2022.¹³⁴ That same year, William Blacoe produced a verse-by-verse commentary on the pastoral letters, highlighting textual variants and scholarly insight into the text, and Ed Pinegar, Doug Bassett, and Ted Earl published a verse-by-verse source book of quotes and insights from other LDS leaders and scholars on the four Gospels.¹³⁵

Richard Holzapfel and Thomas Wayment group verses and provide commentary similar to McConkie’s format. They explain what they think the original author intended to convey by bringing historical and cultural details to bear on the text while providing some of their own insights on meaning and textual connections.¹³⁶ Robert Millet’s verse commentary for Paul’s writings focuses primarily on the doctrines and principles found therein and provides personal anecdotes and thoughts from other religious leaders and thinkers.¹³⁷

The large-scale BYU New Testament Commentary series is the current ongoing effort to provide a comprehensive commentary on almost every verse in the New Testament. Beyond providing the new translations discussed above, each volume in the series attempts to recover how the original authors likely intended their texts to be read by explaining the meaning of phrases using historical, cultural, text-variant, and linguistic details. This is usually followed by an analysis of the verses in their larger context, providing the scholars’ insights into the literary composition and intertextual or thematic influences the authors may have attempted to convey.¹³⁸

Textual Analyses. Beyond verse-by-verse commentaries, other text-focused studies often include deep analysis of a phrase, verse, block of verses, chapter, or book. Most of these appear as journal articles or book articles (many are in the publications already mentioned above). A prominent exception is the 1983 monograph by BYU religion professor Richard Lloyd Anderson, who made a significant contribution to Latter-day Saint New Testament scholarship with his Understanding Paul.¹³⁹ Anderson received his juris doctorate from Harvard in 1954, where he simultaneously studied Greek history, receiving a PhD in ancient history from the University of California at Berkeley. Understanding Paul provides details concerning the life of Paul; however, it focuses much of its attention on understanding the texts of Paul’s letters. Moving chronologically through the Epistles of the New Testament, Anderson introduces each letter with background information and issues of authorship before moving into an exploration of the teachings and doctrinal issues in each. His approach is scholarly, combined with modern-day revelation and Book of Mormon references. He also tucks an explanation of scripturally supported Latter-day Saint doctrines into the appendices. His biblical sources stem largely from the Greek text and the King James Version of the English Bible, but he refers to other translations as well.¹⁴⁰ This work has remained important because of its thoroughgoing research and scholarly value in its field.

In 1984, editors Kent P. Jackson and Robert L. Millet, both ancient scripture professors at BYU, published a book series of articles focused on text analysis entitled Studies in Scripture. Two of the volumes in the series focused on the Gospels and on Acts through Revelation.¹⁴¹ Like most collected-papers publications, the articles vary in tone and scholarship from chapter to chapter. The variations depend mostly upon an author’s background and intent, some incorporating historical, cultural, and linguistic analysis more than others. In the opening article of the Gospels volume, Jackson outlines the approach that the series writers have taken, which is an accurate reflection of the effort of most Latter-day Saint commentaries. He wrote that when studying the Gospels, one must study them in light of modern revealed truth, rely upon the Holy Ghost, learn the expressions of ancient writers (language syntax), and understand the Gospels historically within their own context.¹⁴²

In addition to the Studies in Scripture volumes, the annual Sidney B. Sperry Symposium held at Brigham Young University has typically focused on the New Testament every four years. Publications of these proceedings contain many articles that provide analysis or commentary of New Testament texts.¹⁴³ The Sperry Symposium publications and Studies in Scripture volumes were some of the first books containing a collection of articles by various scholars and teachers of the New Testament. More collections have continued to be edited and published at a seemingly exponential pace over the last few decades, primarily by BYU religion professors and through Church-related presses (for example, Deseret Book and the BYU Religious Studies Center).¹⁴⁴

More recent individual publications focusing on textual commentary include volumes by Taylor Halverson and Elder Jeffrey R. Holland.¹⁴⁵ Halverson provides brief analyses of select passages by highlighting historical and cultural details and making connections to patterns that will enrich the reader’s understanding of the New Testament. Holland provides lay members with personal reflection essays and commentary in reaction to various episodes of selected New Testament chapters.

Guides and Harmonies

Another category of Latter-day Saint approaches to the New Testament is guides and harmonies. Publications in this category may provide compilations of previous scholarship or statements from Church leaders, questions for readers and teachers to consider, charts, synchronization of the four Gospels, and other helps. There may be little to no analysis presented directly to the reader; however, the selection of material and the questions asked do require some analysis on the back end and certainly form a kind of commentary.

In 1954, Lowell Bennion wrote the course of study for the Gospel Doctrine classes of the Church’s Sunday Schools, Teachings of the New Testament (1956), later issuing a revised version of the same book that was intended to be used as a reference guide. Unlike the other study guide writers, Bennion organized his book topically, covering major themes of the New Testament: salvation through Jesus Christ, personal and social ideals, and characteristics of the primitive Church. He focused mostly on the modern implications of the teachings with little reference to historical or social circumstances.¹⁴⁶

John W. Welch and John F. Hall created Charting the New Testament (2002), a reference collection of charts and lists falling into eighteen different categories. The charts, tables, graphs, maps, lists, and time lines cover a huge spectrum of topics: chronology, Jewish cultural and literary backgrounds, Roman history, demographics, teachings of Christ, doctrines, journeys of Paul, word counts, linguistic comparisons (of the Gospels), people and places, time periods, lineages, and more. This collection is a thorough and useful reference for any teacher or student of the New Testament.¹⁴⁷

Harmonies help create a single narrative by either placing similar texts in parallel columns or by weaving together all the elements into a single text.¹⁴⁸ Since the pieces do not all fit together seamlessly, much analysis and weighing of evidence (and thus commentary via editing) must occur. Sperry’s Our Lord of the Gospels (1954) was a large-scale harmony project. The years he spent developing and publishing a chronological harmonization demonstrate his focus on the life of Jesus Christ and the value he saw in creating a clear mental framework for the historical reality and flow of the Savior’s life. Sperry’s book is divided into four sections: aids for using the harmony; a 130-page chronological chart of the Gospels; the 400-page harmony itself (including Christ’s appearance as spelled out in the Book of Mormon); and explanatory charts, tables, and maps. His non–Latter-day Saint sources were all Protestants, mostly Baptists. President J. Reuben Clark’s explicit primary goals in Our Lord of the Gospels were to make it clear that Jesus Christ’s life and ministry actually occurred as recorded in the Gospels and to increase the knowledge of the life and words of Jesus Christ.¹⁴⁹ According to President Clark, the precise order, time, and place of events is not too material. What matters most are Jesus’ words and deeds.

In 1976, Thomas Mumford published a popular work that simply placed the entire text of the four Gospels in parallel columns.¹⁵⁰ A similar effort was published by Stephen and Julie Hite that included JST changes to the New Testament text.¹⁵¹ David Yarn’s harmony departed from typical parallel columns and blended all the Gospels together into one story of Jesus.¹⁵² Similarly, John Welch provided a unique approach by harmonizing the letters of the Apostles; he arranged the Epistles thematically as one letter, shifting the reader’s attention “away from the usual focus on historical context and the individual authorship of each of [the] letters.”¹⁵³ Other than a preface to his work, he included no additional commentary. In-text notations indicated the Joseph Smith Translation and Greek and English word origins. Todd G. Anderson compiled a two-volume New Testament harmony using modern-day scriptures. His appendices included select charts and commentary.¹⁵⁴

Julie Smith’s and James Falconer’s study guides provide readers with questions to ponder throughout various chapters and verses.¹⁵⁵ The kinds of questions asked may help readers analyze the text more, notice little details, or apply the principles read. Richard Anderson’s Guide to Acts and the Apostles’ Letters is a workbook-style manual with questions to answer along with background material for each book of the New Testament beyond the Gospels.¹⁵⁶ Thomas Valletta provides the complete text of the New Testament along with some marginalia containing insights, historical and cultural background, or quotes from other sources.¹⁵⁷ Lynn Price compiled an index with details of every person in the New Testament.¹⁵⁸

Conclusion

In a religion that promotes and prizes education, New Testament scholarship in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has grown more prolific over the years. The categories outlined herein are by no means all-inclusive, but they do provide a glimpse into the growing diversity of scholarship pertaining to this sacred text. As interests grow and diversify, there is greater opportunity to engage with the variety of approaches to the New Testament in the academic world. Latter-day Saint scholars are increasingly grappling with the difficult issues raised by secular scholarship, even if they do not always accept their conclusions. Their larger scriptural tradition and unique worldview can provide distinctive avenues of thinking about the text that others in the academic world may not see, such as their views on apostasy or the temple. And that is a good thing.