Celestial Marriage and the Bible 2

Read "Celestial Marriage and the Bible 1" first OR I WILL FIND YOU.

Here was my to-do list for my email:

1. Compile all the relevant Bible passages concerning marriage and interpret them.

2. Justify my interpretations.

3. Defend the authenticity of the Bible by refuting the idea that the text was corrupted by repeated mistranslations and misinterpretations and miscalifornias.

4. Interpret Hebrews 6:1, just for kicks.

5. Finish season three of 24.

So, here goes. Get out your Bibles, kids!

(I edited some of it so it's more of an article than personal correspondence)


A few months ago, I quoted from Alma in my Facebook status (34:32-35, if you want to know). I explained in a comment that the passage strongly taught against the notion of work for the dead. My friend Adam, whom I had met on my most recent Utah trip, challenged me by claiming that I had taken the verse out of context. Instead of explaining the context and correct interpretation to me, he insisted that I had some kind of hidden animosity toward Mormons and removed me from his friends list. First, if you are a Mormon, I hope you know that I don’t hate you or look down on you. You’re probably pretty cool in your own way, and all I really intend by writing this is for you to know the truth about the Gospel so that you can benefit from it and God will be glorified in it. Second, logic is a lot like balancing an equation in algebra: What is done to one side must be done to the other. If Adam’s accusation was true (which, I maintain, it was not), would this mean that the Book of Mormon was corrupted? Also, the Book of Mormon has been translated into different languages. Does this mean that those translations carry a different message than the English one? I have a Mormon friend who rejects the LDS doctrine of baptism. Does this disagreement mean that something was removed from the Book of Mormon? If I were to use any of these arguments in conversation with any Mormon, I would probably get shut down easily.

The fact is, nothing has been removed from the Bible. Three small passages may have been added later, but none of these passages have any effect on any Biblical teaching. I can say this with a high degree of certainty because of the abundance of manuscript evidence available. We have more than 5,000 ancient manuscripts of the Greek New Testament - some of which go back as far as 125 A.D. - plus several thousand Latin copies. If anything was ever taken away, the sheer number of manuscripts would show us. What the Old Testament lacks in numbers, it makes up for in age range. We can re-create almost the entire OT using just the Dead Sea scrolls. We even have an Isaiah scroll that’s 2100 years old! What makes this so significant is that there is greater than 99% agreement between the oldest manuscripts and the newest ones, meaning that we would know if anything was taken away or otherwise greatly altered. Remember - God isn’t willing that His word be corrupted. A remnant will always remain (Isaiah 40:7-8). The very same God who preserved the Davidic line through the exile and the inter-testamental period is entirely capable of preserving His book from generation to generation without hiding it from the world or infringing on anyone’s “agency.”