I agree.  I was surprised to see this one moving so slowly.

They're a collection of semi-spontaneous sermons that people like to mine for crazy stuff. It's fairly easy both to shock Mormons with what they say, as well as misuse them as a source. I'm not bidding on them, myself.

Yes, The Pearl of Great Price, Doctrine and Covenants, are Scriptures of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, “the Mormon’s”.

The "Teachings of the 'Prophets'" and a few other books reveal the hypocrisy of the church as well.
They believe the teachings of their 'prophets' to be infallible, but they contradict one another and they try to hide the error in doctrine from their followers.

I also hoped for faster progress. I placed my bid 4 (!) years ago.

If one wants to compare the changes, I believe you can get the Book of Mormon/Doctrines and Covenants/Pearl of Great Price on Amazon for free.

Of course the current version of Doctrine and Covenants removed certain passages that were embarrassing (for example, decrees forbidding black people from their priesthood—the current version only has the change admitting them). So from a historical perspective I would be interested in the 1918 version to see the conflicts. 

It is extremely important to go to "original sources." But as Denise helpfully points out, Mormonism (unlike some other American-born religions like the JW and SDA) does *not* follow the typical static Protestant paradigm; it's its own unique beast and needs to be understood as such. Richard Mouw provides some useful observations on this here. Responsible readers and scholars (like Mouw) understand that every religious tradition needs to be studied on its own terms, and it does no one any favors to mispresent, even if unintentional. Some Evangelical scholars writing in Trinity Journal 20 years ago set out to debunk what they called some "myths" about Mormonism, e.g. 

So, if you want nice original historical sources, check out the Joseph Smith Papers Project. All holographs, all scanned, etc. http://www.josephsmithpapers.org

Second, for claims of hiding Mormon scripture changes, check out the Book of Mormon critical text project. Again, all changes tracked, scans, originals, etc. With a handful of exceptions, this is standard textual criticism cataloging variants due to 19th century hand-copying, hand-set type, etc. http://criticaltext.byustudies.byu.edu The linguistics prof. running that project also has a volume from Yale U. Press on the earliest text of the Book of Mormon, here.

Similarly for the the Doctrine and Covenants, you can find pdf copies of a BYU dissertation by Woodford, "Historical Development of the Doctrine & Covenants." It used to be available direcly from BYU Studies on a CD or download, but is now being surpassed by the JSPP. BTW, D&C never had any revelation about forbidding black ordination, and so never had any removed. For a history of race and Mormonism from Oxford Press, see here. (Edit: To be clear, it is correct that D&C now includes a short Official Declaration about it, but not that any prohibition was ever present in the volume.)

A bunch of this stuff has also been discussed in official and lay LDS publications, so many Mormons are aware in general, if not in detail. See for example, here or here.

Although this thread is quickly beginning to infringe the community guidelines, I decided to reply to correct simple misunderstandings and provide sources, no more.

EDIt: FWIW, I proposed a more current Mormon Collection list in 2014 in this thread here.

Ben,

Thank you for your thoughtful explanation of the context and relevance of these documents.  I very much agree that your proposed "Modern Mormonism" collection would be more useful.  I'm likely going to stay "in" on this one, though, simply because $30 doesn't seem an unreasonable price to me for the Book of Mormon, Peal of Great Price, and Doctrine and Covenants.  If I have to disregard the rest as too dated to be useful, so be it.  It won't be the first time I've gotten "filler" volumes that I didn't care about in a Logos bundle.

Good grief get a life snowflake!

 

Ben said:

It's only our agreement to play by the forum rules that makes the forum work. "Snowflake" is out of line, because you're violating the guidelines you agreed to, which apply to ALL theological discussion. Not "theological discussion I like"  not "theological discussion I dislike," ALL theological discussion. 

So as long as I abide by your chrisitan facism I can speak- your not allowed dissenting opinion- which mine to be perfectly clear was, even though the resources maybe old the false religion doesn't change its spots, just because the books were not written yesterday.

Denise said:

Whyndell, it'd be in Ben's best theological interest for Logos to carry out of date books on Mormonism, thereby making the task of conversion far more difficult.

You, on the other hand, in-between demonstrating the best in Christianity, are hoping Logos will not carry the better resources that would indeed assist in connversion.

Ben points to the most embarrassing sites available ... I've gone through most of them. I'd think Ben's on your side.

Really- wrong again.

Thanks Ben for a very informative post. 

Thank you, Dan. I did put out a bid in April and when I checked back on this page I just happened to notice the first bid was placed in 2012. Seeing how slow this bid moves I am sure it will be a matter of years before i get this set. In the meanwhile, my bid remains.

I don’t think Mormons are Christians, I’m not going to have a pluralistic mentality or be ecumenical about it, but I definitely don’t mind having Mormon studies in my library, both “apologetic” in nature and “informative” with resources written by actual mormons not others who aren’t mormons but claim to know exactly what they teach when in reality they don’t; hence the confusion and unfair attacks in some “apologetics” books.

And by the way, an ex-girlfriend confirmed Mormons are not Christian nor consider themselves Christians.  She said they’re Mormons or LDS, but definitely not Christians.  She was well deep into mormonism and participated in many of their activities (Private mormon dancing, social drinking, etc.).  She was looking for her “Eternal Husband;” and we broke up because obviously I told her I wasn’t “the one,” which I’m very happy I wasn’t.

Anyway, my bid is in and $30 for 45 volumes it’s a steal 👍😁👌

DAL

Ps.  Logos is a tool and if it includes Catholics, Lutherans, Wesleyans, etc. then it should include others also.  Is not an “exclusive tool” for just an “exclusive group,” it should be able to research every belief.

MJ. Smith said:

DAL said:

I don’t think Mormons are Christians, I’m not going to have a pluralistic mentality or be ecumenical about it,

For purposes of using Faithlife products, I have a very simple definition - a group that treats the Christian scriptures i.e. New Testament as scripture. That is not the definition I use in other contexts which is theological and best summarized as "God knows - I don't have to". When I absolutely have to decide if a person is or is not Christian, I go by their values and actions not what they say they believe.

Cornelius wasn’t a Christian and he wasn’t saved (before his conversion), but he behaved better than most Christians.  Based on your logic: Are you saying Cornelius was a Christian because of his values and actions even though the Scriptures teach otherwise? 😁 aaaaah...

Anyway, MJ, I respect your opinion.  This is just a public forum, anybody can have their opinion, so no worries.  If I think something or in this case based on logic, evidence and experience, I know something it doesn’t mean people have to get offended, it just means, in this context, that I don’t mind having Mormon resources in my library.  That’s all 👍😁👌 Theology can get tricky, eh? But we’re not allowed to discuss theology here, so I’ll leave it at that.

DAL

MJ. Smith said:

DAL said:

I don’t think Mormons are Christians, I’m not going to have a pluralistic mentality or be ecumenical about it,

For purposes of using Faithlife products, I have a very simple definition - a group that treats the Christian scriptures i.e. New Testament as scripture. That is not the definition I use in other contexts which is theological and best summarized as "God knows - I don't have to". When I absolutely have to decide if a person is or is not Christian, I go by their values and actions not what they say they believe.

How can you treat the New Testament as scripture and not believe that Jesus is/was/and always will be God? I understand that a person does not need to be a Christian to use FL software or resources.  I hope every Mormon takes advantage of this collection and studied the Bible as well as the Book of Mormon and D&C because they could never come away from this study as a Mormon. Yet to call someone who does not believe the most basic of Christian beliefs (that Jesus is God) a Christian depreciates the term.

As for your suggestion of increasing to $40, that is a good suggestion for those who have not already done it.

And pour completely different meanings into those words.

Bob

Ben said:

For setting the record straight, Latter-day Saints believe Jesus is the divine and only-begotten son of God, and study the New Testament as inspired scripture. 

Anything else is beyond the scope of this board.

They also believe Satan is Jesus‘s brother 😂 And they also believe the NT has been so corrupted it can’t be trusted anymore and they accuse another religious group of that.  My ex-girlfriend and other friends have confirmed that so is not me making stuff up.  Concerning God they claim he became a God...and eventually we will become God’s too; hence, my ex-girlfriend‘s urgent need to find her “eternal husband.”

But anyway, that’s what I was told.

DAL

DAL

Changing the subject to something more within forum guidelines... When I follow the link to the collection, the description of the books included is near useless since it only lists titles and not enough bibliographic information to know what you would be getting. If Faithlife wants to sell something to me, they need to tell me enough about what I would be getting.

There are a few descriptions and links earlier in this thread. 

The Journal of Discourses is a series published by George D. Watt in England. It's a collection of spontaneous discourses of Church leaders in Utah in from c. 1850-70. Watt got permission to take them down in shorthand and publish them in England to earn a little money. However, his kind of shorthand was rare; recent examination between his published English and his shorthand has demonstrated that he did a lot of editorial additions, deletions, and changes in wording. See this article.

JoD has never been terribly important to Latter-day Saints, but it's easy to mine for "shocking" statements, particularly if you approach them with some kind of inerrantist view of prophets (which LDS formally reject) or you anachronistically assume the same kind of unified public statements as are made today (and many LDS do make those assumptions). 

Other books there are older editions (public domain) of uniquely LDS scriptures in the expanded canon. And then there are a few random historical bits and snippets. 

On the 7-volume History of the Church, the wikipedia article is decent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Church_(Joseph_Smith) 

I'd expand that, in keeping with 19th century historiography, the vast majority of material attributed to Joseph Smith in the 1st person (e.g. "I Joseph preached on X" and multiple paragraphs follow), is actually taken from fragmentary 3rd person accounts ("I hrd bro Joseph prech"), expanded, and smoothed. So you can't read those parts as directly from the mouth/pen of Smith. 

I don't think either JoD or History of the Church has many explicit Bible references to get tagged in Logos.