Evangelical Questions: Why is there so much of Isaiah in the Book of Mormon anyway?

by Jennifer Roach, MDiv, LMHC

Luke 4:15-17 “He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read… the scroll of the prophet Isaiah.”

Welcome back to Come Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions. My name is Jennifer Roach and today we’re going to talk about something from the New Testament that is actually something from the Old Testament, and what it has to do with the Book of Mormon. We’re talking about Isaiah, and why so much of it is in the Book of Mormon. The reason this topic comes up in this week’s readings is because we see Jesus going to the synagogue and reading from the scroll of Isaiah. Luke 4:15-17 “He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read… the scroll of the prophet Isaiah.”

If you’ve had conversations with Evangelical friends and family before this topic has almost certainly come up: Why is there so much Isaiah in the Book of Mormon? So we’re going to talk about that in a couple ways. First, we’re going to try and understand what Evangelicals mean when they ask that question – it’s a bit different than what we mean when we ask it. Then we’ll look at some answers to their questions and finally look at the unique gift our faith brings to this part of the conversation.

What Are They Asking

You have certainly heard church members ask (complain? bemoan?) about why is there so much Isaiah in the Book of Mormon, but they mean it more in a way that says, “We already get this during Old Testament year, why do we have to spend weeks on it again?” It’s a complaint about repetition, or sometimes a complaint about not understanding the meaning, but that is not what an Evangelical is doing when they ask this question.

I’ll tell you my experience….The first time I read the Book of Mormon I did not know what it was about. I think I’ve mentioned before that I actually thought it was about the Utah period. So I went in not knowing the plot, and certainly not knowing that Isaish would be quoted so much. I was surprised and curious about what it was doing there and how it was functioning inside the larger text. That’s a conversation for another day because what a lot of people reading the Book of Mormon initially think is that this is plagiarism. “Oh look, he just straight copied that out of the Bible!” Now, that’s not what’s happening or how the Isaiah quotes are functioning inside the text, but it is what Evangelicals worry about. Why?

Because what they’re really asking with this question is something like, “Aren’t you just stealing scripture from the Bible to legitimize the Book of Mormon?” And that’s a fair question for them to be asking because it puts them in a dilemma that goes something like this…If I believe the book of Isaiah is scripture, and it’s here in the Book of Mormon then I have to concede that I believe at least parts of the Book of Mormon and I feel uncomfortable saying that because of my loyalty to the Bible.”

In order to understand a bit deeper we need to look at that word, “scripture.” For Latter-day Saints the word “scripture” is a pretty broad word. We refer not only to our 4 standard works as scripture, but we refer to our Patriarchal Blessings as “personal scripture,” we treat some documents that are not officially part of our 4 standards works as if they are scripture such as the Proclamation on the Family, and even further we sometimes treat the words we receive from our leaders during General Conference as scripture. For us, the word, “scripture” has a lot of wiggle room in it. But it is not that way for Evangelicals. In the Evangelical world only the Old and New Testaments are scripture. Some of them have a bit of fuzzy knowledge about the fact that there has been debate over certain books of the Bible which are sometimes included in the canon, and sometimes are not. But all of that is seen as just part of the historical process – today the lines of what is scripture and what isn’t are very clear for them. You can see why they get a little nervous when material from their very carefully defined canon is mixed into our open canon in service of a story that they don’t know, and don’t understand. We’ll leave out of the conversation the fact that the entire Old Testament (not just Isaiah) is included in their Christian Bible and sometimes the Jewish people (whose Bible it was first) have had some things to say about that. But that aside, you can see how this is a really a conversation about open vs. closed canon.

Why does an open canon bother them so much?

Many latter-day Saints have a hard time understanding why an open canon is so troublesome to Evangelicals. “If God has more to say, wouldn’t you want to hear it?” But when you get into conversation with Evangelicals something confusing starts to happen. Evangelicals DO want to hear more from God, they do believe God speaks today, they do believe he has both personal messages for them as well as larger messages for all who call themselves Christians. We very much have that in common with them. During my first read-through of the Book of Mormon I really had to grapple with this. I believed that God can and does speak today, but I felt a bit queasy about it being written down in a book. But when I started to formulate that into a sentence that went something like, “God can speak today, you just can’t write it down in a book,” I knew that wasn’t a solid place to stand. It was surprising for me, but what this question illuminates is the struggle Evangelicals have around authority.

A bit of history is in order here. Evangelicals are a subset of Protestants. Which means, as you will see, that they already have two strikes against the concept of authority. In 1517 Martin Luther nails his 95-Thesis to the church door and Protestant Reformation begins (that’s not a historically accurate version of how it began or why, but it is the popular version and good enough for our purposes here.) The Reformation results in churches that used to be under the authority of Rome, now becoming their own authority. And it was mostly based on country or region. The Dutch Reformation happened very differently than the English Reformation, for example and by the end the Dutch wanted to do things the way they wanted to do them, and the English wanted to do things the way they wanted to do them. Fast-forward about 500 more years and we have many churches doing as they see fit. Around the same time as the Baby Boom is happening there starts to be a feeling in American Christianity that the old ways should be moved on from, and that included religion. Starting in Southern California, and moving across the country churches began with the expressed purpose of not being fuddy-duddys about church but bringing in rock music, allowing for casual dress and a more relaxed service. This group, initially called Neo-Fundamentalists, become the Evangelicals. So, Evangelicals are not just Protestants (protest-tant) and the children of all that entails, they “protest” against their own tradition and advocate for a more relaxed and informal worship setting where no one is going to tell them how to dress or to cut their hair. In this sense they’re double-Protestants, and have a double-dose of suspicion of authority.

Their attitude of being suspicious of authority shows up in their theology too. You’ve certainly heard an Evangelical friend say something like, “We don’t need the priesthood, we have the priesthood of all believers” (this is an issue we will also get to in another video) and that is the ultimate anti-authority statement because they get to have it both ways by saying that authority is not needed, and even if it were we have it in ourselves.

But then a funny thing – a very human thing – happens and it’s a psychological principle that happens to everyone. Let’s take the topic of budgeting and responsible spending. Most people will look at those who spend their money more freely than they do and consider them foolish, maybe even reckless. But they will look at those who are stricter with their money than they themselves are and see them as too tight or too rigid. Somehow the human mind always sets itself as the exact, perfect midpoint. And this phenomenon happens here to Evangelicals – the very ones who we can call “double-Protestants” look at the open canon of Latter-day Saints and say, “No, that’s too far. Our fuddy-duddy grandparents didn’t go far enough, but you go too far. We are the correct midpoint.”

I don’t tell you that so that you can go and argue this reality with them, I tell it to you so that you can understand what is going on with them and why they think the way they do. It’s actually a very human and understandable process. Instead of arguing against it and trying to convince them of why we actually do have the proper authority to introduce new scriptures, or that having an open canon is a good thing, maybe go back to the very thing that prompted this entire discussion. What is Isaiah doing in the Book of Mormon? Or for that matter, consider the verse that inspired this conversation: Why is Jesus quoting from Isaiah?

Here is what Jesus read from Isaiah:

The Spirit of the Lord is on me,

    because he has anointed me

    to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners

    and recovery of sight for the blind,

to set the oppressed free,

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

When Jesus takes Isaiah out of its original context and applies it to his day, he does so in a very unique and unexpected way. The poor get good news, the prisoners get free, the blind get sight. To be totally fair, this is what the Evangelical movement was about when it began, or at least what it tried to be about – making room for all kinds of people in the church. The sections of Isaiah that are in the Book of Mormon are there to teach us about covenant keeping and that God keeps his side of the deal, and that even when we keep messing up there is always a path back to God. When your Evangelical friend asks you why there is so much of Isaiah in the Book of Mormon at least part of what they’re asking is: Do you really have the authority to add Isaiah to your book? But it’s the same pattern and purpose that they are longing for in their churches too – that there is room for everyone, that it doesn’t matter what has happened in your life, there is always a path back to God. They put a huge emphasis on the Gospel being for everyone, no matter what. And by including the sections of Isaiah that we do into the Book of Mormon, we are also saying that God has a path for us back to him, and that when we make covenants with God he will always help us keep them. In that sense, we want the same things….and if anything our unique contribution here is that the path back to God is not some ethereal path you have to figure out for yourself. It’s defined well and there is an entire church to support you on that path.

I hope you enjoyed this episode, join us again next week when we look at more questions about the New Testament.

More Come, Follow Me resources here.

Jennifer Roach earned a Master of Divinity from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and a Master of Counseling from Argosy University. Before her conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she was an ordained minister in the Anglican church. Her own experience of sexual abuse from a pastor during her teen years led her to care deeply about issues of abuse in faith communities.

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