Sources of generally reliable doctrinal information

This page has two sections:


	•	The scriptural canon


	•	Official and semi-official pages

The scriptural canon

Mormons — like members of nearly all the Latter Day Saint Movement churches — believe that the Bible is scripture (despite what many people may think); they also believe that the book called the Book of Mormon is scripture. In addition, most of the Latter Day Saint Movement churches have a book of scripture called the Doctrine and Covenants (some call it the Book of Commandments), although each church's edition generally differs from the others in minor but very important ways; also, the Mormon church, along with a few of the other Latter Day Saint Movement churches, accepts a collection called the Pearl of Great Price as scripture. Finally, the LDS (Strang) church accepts the Book of the Law of the Lord as scripture. Except for the Book of the Law of the Lord, unless otherwise noted all of the extra-Biblical canonical items listed on this page are in the form used by the LDS (Young) church.

I have also included a section that gives sources for multiple books of the Latter Day Saint Movement canons, as well as a section for non-canonical texts that may be of interest to one studying the scriptures.

Please note that all of these links are to English-language sources unless otherwise stated.

The Bible

My favorite Biblical source on the web


	•	The WWW Bible Gateway, a most impressive place, containing several versions of the Bible in several languages — and all searchable!

English translations


	•	The Authorized/King James Version of the Bible


	•	The Douay-Rheims Bible


	•	A study Bible (i'm not sure of the translation) with commentary; includes the Apocrypha

Multiple-language sources/non-English translations


	•	The WWW Bible Gateway, which contains several searchable versions of the Bible in several languages


	•	French, German, English, and Latin (Vulgate) translations


	•	The 1984 revision of the German Luther translation, broken down by book


	•	A Folio Infobase format (.nfo) copy of the Authorized/King James Version of the Apocypha, along with various bits of non-scriptural stuff

The Book of Mormon


	•	The Book of Mormon, available both broken down by book and as one large file


	•	A gopher (anybody remember gopher?) Book of Mormon search utility — in my experience, wonderfully fast even over fairly slow connections


	•	The 1830 (first) edition of the Book of Mormon, broken down by book

Doctrine and Covenants (called the Book of Commandments by some groups)


	•	The LDS (Young) version of the Doctrine and Covenants, broken down into roughly ten-section chunks

The Pearl of Great Price


	•	The Pearl of Great Price, broken down roughly by book and including some historical notes

Included in the Pearl of Great Price are the Articles of Faith, a short list of the beliefs of the Mormon church originally composed by Joseph Smith in 1838; it's arguably the closest thing to a creed that the Mormon church has. They are currently also available on the web by themselves.

The Book of the Law of the Lord (accepted as scripture by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints [Strang], Voree, Wisconsin, USA)


	•	The 1856 edition of the Book of the Law of the Lord (along with some other revelations of James J. Strang)

Multiple books


	•	All the books in the Mormon canon


	•	The Scripture-L mailing list homepage, including a link for searching the books in the Mormon canon


	•	Bits of the Mormon scriptures arranged in poetic form (the validity of the conclusions drawn on this site are, to put it mildly, not uncontroversial)

Non-canonical sources (included as items of possible interest for the scriptural scholar)


	•	The religious and sacred texts page, including canonical and non-canonical sources for many different religions


	•	Various early Christian texts, including the Nag Hammadi library, along with proposed reconstructions such as the Book of Q


	•	A collection of the ante-Nicene, Nicene, and post-Nicene church fathers


	•	Later Jewish, Islamic, and Christian (some heretical) texts dating to the 16th century


	•	An eclectic source for Nag Hammadi texts, Dead Sea scrolls texts, gnostic, alchemic, kabbalistic texts, and more — anything you ever wanted to read even remotely related to Gnosticism (it even has a search engine!)


	•	Information on the Dead Sea scrolls

Official and Semi-Official Pages

Nearly all of the Mormon-oriented pages on the web (including mine) are very unofficial, but there are a few that have been put together as official or semi-official pages by local and worldwide church organizations. These are listed below broken down in as sane an order as i could manage — pages covering entire churches come first, followed by organizations indirectly related to the larger church organization, then church-related colleges and universities, and finally other church-related places and organizations. It should be noted that in all of these groupings after the one covering entire churches, the church these sites are affiliated with is the LDS (Young) church unless otherwise noted.

Churchwide pages

These are listed in alphabetical order by the official name of each church (omitting articles); i have also given the location of each church's headquarters and, where easily available, the name of the best-known early leader (after Joseph Smith jr.) of each church to assist in telling them apart from each other. It should be noted that these are all different, though related, churches, with the one known most generally to the world as the Mormon church the one affiliated with the name Brigham Young and based in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA.


	•	Church of Christ, Temple Lot (Independence, Missouri, USA)


	•	Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (James J. Strang; Voree, Wisconsin, USA)


	•	The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Brigham Young; Salt Lake City, Utah, USA)


	•	Community of Christ/Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Joseph Smith III; Independence, Missouri, USA)


	•	New Covenant Church of God (Arvika, Sweden)


	•	Restoration Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Independence, Missouri, USA)


	•	True and Living Church of Jesus Christ of Saints of the Last Days (Jim Harmston; Manti, Utah, USA)

Organizations indirectly related to the church


	•	The FARMS (Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies) homepage


	FARMS is about as close to an official source for apology (in the ecclesiastical sense of the word) as the Mormon church has


	•	The James E. Talmage Society/LAMPS (LDS Association of Mathematical and Physical Scientists) homepage

Church-related colleges and universities


	•	Brigham Young University


	This is the college in Provo, Utah, USA run by the LDS (Young) church (please note, though, that i am most emphatically not a Brigham Young University fan — i cheer for the places i went to school, the University of Maryland and the University of Pennsylvania!)


	•	Brigham Young University-Hawaii


	Hawaii — 'nuff said!


	•	Brigham Young University-Idaho (formerly Ricks College)


	A college in Rexburg, Idaho, USA, it is in the process of transitioning from a two-year college to a four-year one


	•	Graceland College


	This is a college in Lamoni, Iowa, USA run by the CoC/RLDS (Smith III) church


	•	LDS Business College


	A college in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA offering one- and two-year programs focusing on business


	•	Park College


	A college in Parkville, Missouri, USA affiliated with the CoC/RLDS (Smith III) church


	•	Southern Virginia University


	Located in Buena Vista, Virginia, USA, this school is not actually run by the LDS (Young) church, but it is owned by a group of Mormons who have chosen to run it as much like Brigham Young University as possible

Other church-run places and organizations


	•	The Joseph Smith Memorial Building (Salt Lake City, Utah, USA)


	•	The Polynesian Cultural Center (Laie, Hawaii, USA)

And since the list had become too long to manage, i have stopped listing pages for individual organizations within ecclesiastical units of the church separately; instead, i'm listing the Bengali Project's list of pages with information about various individual church organizations.

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Last updated 3 March 2002 v6.1