Like many other religions, Mormons claim that the Book of Mormon is some type of continuation or extension of the Christian Bible. However, when comparing the theology of the two, they are quite distinct in many different ways (although they are also distinct literarily as explored beforehand).

The first major way in which this Book of Mormon fails to live up to the Bible is the lack of prophetic scandals or slip-ups. While the Bible features great “heroes of faith”, almost all of them have their own great failures - Some of which are worse than their good deeds: Adam and Eve are granted all good things in the garden of Eden, and then blow it by transgressing the one command of the LORD (Genesis 2-3), Noah follows next by bringing about all of faithful humanity and creation on an ark just to get caught drunk and naked with his son (Genesis 7-9), Abraham was called by God to be a father of many nations and still slept with his slave and gave away his wife to other men on many occasions (Genesis 12-23), great King David slept with the wife of another man and killed the man (2 Samuel 1-12), and wise and splendorous Solomon took many wives of foreign kings (1 Kings 1-11) and transgressed every law for kings in the Torah (Deuteronomy 7:1-5; 17:14-20). The Book of Mormon, on the other hand, does not seem to present any of its “good guys” as having any bit of moral compromise. Neither Nephi nor Jared, Moroni nor Mormon, nor any of the other prophets seem to have any slip-ups or compromises.

While one could argue that some few biblical prophets are the same - Such as Daniel and maybe Joseph - these are only a few examples in a grand narrative spanning thousands of years and regions; even then, these prophets are few and far from the majority of great prophets that, nonetheless, make great messes of their lives at one point or another. The same cannot be said of the Book of Mormon - Which spans even further from the Near East to the Americas - yet does not present a single one of its characters as anything less than perfect. For a narrative that claims to continue in such a story, it seems that it should continue in its style and presentation of even prophets as being morally-compromised men.

Next, an error not of omission, but inconsistency: the Book of Mormon, when presenting a narrative it claims to be parallel to that of the Bible, sometimes contradicts that very narrative. One of the few examples of this (because it is one of the few parts of the book that tells the tale in the same time and region as that of the Bible) is found in one of the last books of Mormon: Ether. It begins by telling of some character, Jared, pleading with God not to confound his language as He had the rest of creation at the Tower of Bable. Somehow, contradictory to what the Bible says, the LORD grants this request and his language is preserved (Ether 1:33-35). He goes on to do the scientifically impossible - Making some wooden barges to take under the water with some spiritual engineering that allowed for airflow and light (Ether 1:38-2:25). This whole account goes completely contradictory to what is told in the Bible, where all languages are “confounded”. The significance of this book going out of its way to contradict such a detail (as insignificant as it might be) is not only puzzling on its own but even more so when considering the fact that it is not so much as hinted to in the biblical account of the event.

Not only are many of the stories plainly inconsistent with what is told in the Bible, but the very nature of the book in its whole is irreconcilable with that of the Bible and the story that it presents progressively. The Book of Mormon goes against such rules by presenting a supposed prophecy of the crucifixion of Jesus in the introduction of the story. In the First Book of Nephi, Nephi records a dream that his father claimed to have had (the setting is said to be 592 BC at the latest): “Yea, even six hundred years from the time that my father left Jerusalem, a prophet would the Lord God raise up among the Jews—even a Messiah, or, in other words, a Savior of the world” (1 Nephi 10:4). He goes on to pull full quotes out of the Gospels to describe John the Baptist (without using his name) as some prophesied forerunner of Jesus (1 Nephi 10:7-10); he even explicitly mentions the death and resurrection of Jesus for the sins of the world (1 Nephi 10:10-12). Not only is this account given in such great detail in this Book of Mormon that was said to have been taken to the Americas (the beginning of 1 Nephi supposedly takes place in Israel), but it claims that one man had known many key details of the death and resurrection of Jesus hundreds of years beforehand in the time of the prophet Jeremiah.

The Bible is completely different in this manner, as it only lets little information pile up and detail add to detail until it is all fulfilled in Jesus. For example, first, the coming of someone to defeat evil is briefly prophesied after the fall (Genesis 3:15). Then, at the end of the Torah, it is said that “Never since has there arisen a prophet in Israel like Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face” (Deuteronomy 34:10). This idea of some person coming to save humanity is developed throughout the Hebrew Bible and into the New Testament where it opens up with a genealogy that connects this first lady promised to have a descendent that would crush evil (Eve) to Jesus (Luke 3:23-38). This idea of some idea beginning on the first pages of the Bible and being developed throughout to completion is Jesus is universally accepted by Christians and called “progressive revelation”. This concept, however, is completely discarded in the Book of Mormon, which takes just ten pages to let out the details of the climax of the salvation of humanity. The fact that the Book of Mormon martyrs such an idea is even more obscene considering the fact that the whole of the Book refers to this event with so much detail that it might have just happened (1 Nephi 10:10-13; 11:33; 2 Nephi 6:9). Even worse, the prophecies use words like “crucifixion” that would not have even existed in the language, time, or cultural context of the supposed writing of the Book of Mormon.

However, such contradictions cannot come as unexpected in the canon that the Book of Mormon claims was never closed. As every Christian creed and confession beforehand would agree on, the canon of the Bible was closed - And nothing more than the Apocrypha was let into any of the canons. That is until the Book of Mormon was written and claimed within itself that the canon had always been open. 2 Nephi 29 tells some supposed word from God:

Know ye not that there are more nations than one?...Know ye not that the testimony of two nations is a witness unto you that I am God, that I remember one nation like unto another? Wherefore, I speak the same words unto one nation like unto another. And when the two nations shall run together the testimony of the two nations shall run together also…And because that I have spoken one word ye need not suppose that I cannot speak another; for my work is not yet finished; neither shall it be until the end of man, neither from that time henceforth and forever. Wherefore, because that ye have a Bible ye need not suppose that it contains all my words; neither need ye suppose that I have not caused more to be written. (2 Nephi 29:7-10).

The Book of Mormon claims that the scriptural canon was never closed but that God had always kept it open. This very idea, however, brings up a plethora of problems: the Book of Mormon is the source that claims that the Scriptural canon was never closed so that the Book of Mormon would be later added to that canon - But supposing the scriptural canon never included the Book of Mormon in the first place and the scriptural canon did not make itself open, then the Book of Mormon that argued for an open canon to allow itself in would be circular reasoning. Even if this circular reasoning was valid, it would not solve which books are in or out of the canon or even prove the Book of Mormon to be valid. It would only present the question of, if the canon was never closed, what other books are also in it? Another great problem with the reasoning is the fact that this book claims to have been written just around the time of Jeremiah the prophet when the biblical canon was open, but the Book of Mormon argues for an open canon that the people of the day would not have been concerned with or even had a concept for (the “canon” was a concept that was not worried about until about the time of the Second Temple).

Another peculiar detail in the arguments for the open canon is that God had already worked so hard to bring salvation to the gentiles (2 Nephi 29:4) which is made all the more curious when considering that this was written around 545 BC. It also calls the Jews God’s ancient people that he now hates and has rejected (2 Nephi 29:5) which is also interesting as God would go on to speak through more Jewish prophets to bring a message for the coming Jewish Messiah according to the storyline of the Scriptures. Another interesting prophecy that goes on to be repeated is one of a church set up by the Devil himself (1 Nephi 13:4-6; 22:22-23; 2 Nephi 28:18-23). This church is referred to as flattering those around them with money and lies (2 Nephi 28:18-23). It talks about it as some “kingdom of the Devil” (1 Nephi 22:22-23). These passages have often been interpreted as referring to the entirety of the Orthodox Church from its foundation until the time of Joseph Smith “renewing” the “true” church. Despite the lack of historical evidence for the orthodox church being known for either flattering anyone or lying people about a lack of Hell (2 Nephi 28:22), and of any other church that adhered to any type of proto-Mormon doctrines or practices (let alone holding to the doctrines and practices that they hold to today) as referred to in 1 Nephi 14:10. It says that the people of this “church of the Lamb of God” are “few, because of the wickedness and abominations of the whore who sat upon many waters; nevertheless, I beheld that the church of the Lamb, who were the saints of God, were also upon ball the face of the earth” (1 Nephi 14:10). Despite even the lack of evidence for this church, the whole idea of some church established by the Devil - And the concept of it ruling over the small church “of the Lamb of God” and quenching its power and righteousness - seems entirely opposed to the exhortation that Jesus gives to Peter: “And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven” (Matthew 16:18-19). The fact that some church from the Hell itself could rule over some supposedly righteous church for the first 1700 years of its existence and somehow not have the gates of Hell prevailing against it is interesting, to say the least, and invalid at most.

In conclusion, the Book of Mormon, being quite an achievement for a man that claims to have been illiterate, is hardly captivating as a story and insignificant in meaning. As earlier expressed, it is interesting how the writing style, language, and problems posed in the Book of Mormon were all especially relevant in the days of Joseph Smith despite the fact that they were only assumed to have been fully understood in the writings of the actual Bible (take, for example, the ideas of baptism or election). Further, the Book of Mormon quite conveniently opens up the canon to itself and validates itself early on in its own message by prophesying the coming, death, and resurrection of some Messiah that would not even appear doing the things prophesied in the book. It is also convenient that some knowledge of an apostate church that would rule and reign until the coming of Smith was expressed only in the Book of Mormon which Joseph “translated.” All of these things were not only relevant to the time of Joseph Smith but would have constantly been heard on all the street corners coming from passionate preachers and such.