I have a suspicion that most Mormons, even active, involved ones, have never actually read the BoM cover to cover.

My mom was a seminary teacher for many years, and had been a RS president and YW president. She told me once (fairly late in her life) that she had never read the BoM cover to cover. I can’t say for certain that my dad never did, but seeing him read the BoM was a rare sight. My parents were both educated and well-read (in addition to being active members), but I suppose Isaiah’s words in 2 Nephi can dissuade the best of us.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if a higher percentage of RFM posters have read “the most correct book on earth” than LDS members.

As for me, I read it all the way through several times. The first time I completed it, I was a teenager; the last time, I was a middle aged man. I always gave it the benefit of the doubt, but that got increasingly difficult with each successive reading. Each time I finished, I prayed for a spiritual witness, always believing that this would be the time I got the answer—it never happened. If Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, I displayed insanity several times during my Mormon experience.

Yes. Several times.

If you ever need surgery, tell the doctor you’ll probably need extra anesthesia.

Yes, 3 times through

Ugh, yes, and I'm not even Mormon. I promised my wife I would. She thought I would be compelled to convert once I read it.

GregS Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Ugh, yes, and I'm not even Mormon. I promised my
> wife I would. She thought I would be compelled to
> convert once I read it.


LOL I did that with my Dad. He read it and said, "Violent little book, isn't it?"

Not the reaction I was expecting. I was confused. Wasn't the spirit of the book supposed to take him over or something? LOL

GregS Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Ugh, yes, and I'm not even Mormon. I promised my
> wife I would. She thought I would be compelled to
> convert once I read it.

I'm guessing in the dark here, but it's very possible that your
wife never read it all the way through.

The idea that people are converted by reading the BOM is
something that's preached by the cult all the time. Members are
repeatedly told that reading the BOM all the way through will
covert someone. They hear miraculous stories of someone angry
critic who read it in order to disprove it but finally ended up
being converted by reading it.

The fact that they're TMBs already often is an excuse why they
don't really need to subject themselves to the agony of actually
reading it. But a lot of Mormons say that reading the BOM will
convert you when they, themselves, have not read it all the way
through.

You may be right. I've never asked whether she's read it straight through. My wife is dyslexic, so reading anything, let alone already garbled nonsense like the BoM, is a slog.

She had the killing-two-birds-with-one-stone idea of having me read a chapter each night to her before going to bed. She had me stop after a few nights because I couldn't read a page without laughing.

The first time was as a sophomore in high school as that was the assignment.

I loved it when my good friend found out I didn't believe challenged me to read the bofm if she sent me a copy. I'm sure I have at least one copy (my ex's gold paperback his MP gave him) from the 1970s. I told her I'd read it, but that I still wouldn't believe. I'm actually sure I've read it more than she has and definitely more than my parents did.

Actually, I found my mother's scriptures in my daughter's bedroom (over the summer while she was gone). They were just sitting out. And then I realized that I bought my mom some scriptures in the 1970s. Sure enough. They are the ones I gave my mother. I wonder what happened to the ones I gave my father. My sisters divided everything up. They threw me out of the family for a year.

I tried to get through it in Seminary and like everyone else made it to 2nd Nephi and then started skimming.

Before my mission I felt compelled to read it all the way through and then pray again hoping for the fulfillment of Moroni's promise. Geez does that book need a good edit. Of course by the time an editor finished it would only be a pamphlet.

I suspect my TBM to the max mom has never read it. She feels since she already has a testimony and mountain moving faith that it is unnecessary at this point I imagine.

I read it twice and no matter how I tried to like it, it was boring af. Of course I thought everyone else loved it, etc, and that there was something wrong with me for not feeling inspired. I should have left then, but noooooo.What a waste of time!

Another example of the emperor's new clothes. You were bored but assumed that everyone else loved it. I was bored, but I was sure that the truly spiritual saints loved it.

We blamed ourselves when we should have blamed the boring, nonsensical book.

I never made it all the way through, but I tried really hard. It was absolutely the most tiresome tome I have ever run across. I could not see, for the life of me. how people could rant and rave about how inspiring (add your adjective of choice here) it was. I think I got a bit beyond Nephi II, but not enough to brag about.

I've read Don Quixote in the original Spanish, (required course for Spanish majors) but couldn't manage the BoM in the original, somewhat mangled, English.

Cover to cover, in seminary, as an assignment.
I suppose the idea was that I'd find it amazing and wonderful and inspirational. I found it mostly boring, really violent, and I noticed all the rather silly 19th-century anachronisms. Fed my doubts, but not enough to get me out.

Read it again cover-to-cover on my mission, as part of a mission challenge, after I'd been out about a year.
This time it seemed even more violent and silly, and all it did was reinforce my doubts as to its "divine origin."

I suspect that, much as with the bible, belief in the divinity of a book often rests on ignorance of it. When you actually read it, and notice all the nonsense, the shine can come off pretty quickly.

I've had similar experiences with folks insisting to me that the bible is the "word of god." When I ask them if they've read the stories about the prophet who had god send bears to maul children for teasing him about being bald, or when the Israelites convinced a city they wouldn't kill them if they'd convert, had all the men be circumcised, and then while they were recovering went in and killed them all (and took their daughters to have sex with)...they often claim those things aren't even in the bible. 'Cause they haven't read it.

I know way more people who have read the BoM (which isn't many) than have read the Bible.

Even the Bible thumpers I know stick to the few verses that support their agenda and know little of the rest.

I read the Bible all the way through. At least there was enough there for Cecile B. DeMille get a few good screenplays out of.

What a waste of time.

Yes, but only as a missionary. I always had trouble looking up scriptures. My aaronic ph years were pretty embarrassing and I was continually made fun of for looking up verses in the "wrong" book. I was the class joke so I felt that I had to work harder than others when I arrived at the MTC.

yes, a few times. It was my last read through that finally caused my shelf to collapse.

Yes, unfortunately several times. If it were made into a movie, it would probably be x-rated for all of the extreme violence in it.

5 or 6 times as a missionary.

And the entire d&c several times, and the pearl of great price

Cover to cover I thought god lived in there spoke in them no where else and was searching for both metaphysical philosophical and cultural political truth while taking biology algebra geometry
Not so good it’s not so good for that

Besides in Sunday Classes and Elder’s Quorum and the bullshit 15 minutes a day each as an individual as a couple and as a family, you mean?

Yes. Cover to cover, twice. That’s enough.

Human

Yes. Cover to cover several times and many, many years of study.

1/2 of the first page...and I was bored and wondered Wtf am I doing this for?

You read enough to know that Nephi was born of goodly parents. You needed to read a few more pages to know that he was a murderer.

I remember not one word of it.

"and it came to pass" with that you now remember half of it

Nope...nary a word. No clue what in it.

I've made a few attempts to read the Book of Mormon from cover to cover, but have never made it past the middle of Alma. I've also read some of Third Nephi because I was interested in reading about Jesus visiting the Americas.

One thing I noticed in Third Nephi is that Jesus preaches the Sermon on the Mount, largely as it appears in the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament. But many mainstream academic New Testament scholars believe that the Sermon on the Mount does not represent an actual sermon given by Jesus, but rather is how the author of Matthew's gospel chose to organize some of the sayings and teachings attributed to Jesus that had come his way.

Also, I've found the Book of Mormon doesn't hold my attention well, and that I don't easily retain details of what I've read in it.

I sometimes ask Mormon missionaries how many of their investigators have read the Book of Mormon from cover to cover by the time they are baptized. The missionaries have said that very few investigators have done this, and that some commit to baptism without having read any of the Book of Mormon. While the missionaries certainly encourage their investigators to read the Book of Mormon, they tell me that their hope is that an investigator will feel the Spirit so strongly while the missionaries are teaching, that the investigator will come to know that the Church is true, even if he or she has read nothing of the Book of Mormon.

Of course, even if an investigator read the Book of Mormon from cover to cover before being baptized, he or she would still not gain from that reading many of the specific Mormon doctrines he or she would ultimately be required to commit to.

Not every week, but practically every week on my mission, I would read Time Magazine cover to cover. Swear!

And every week when the new Los SuperMachos came out, I'd buy a copy and read it cover to cover. EVERY WEEK!

See? Even Lamanites can develop good habits, to go along with all our bad habits...

My take? The BofM, you know that most inspired book of all books, is a boring, ultra violent mish-mash of all mish-mashes. If someone is not falling into sin and someone else calling them to repentance then someone ELSE is falling into sin and someone ELSE bringing them into repentance.

Yadda, yadda. Nodda book that Mark Twain recommends and that's good enough for me.

Yea I have but all I can remember are the bible verses in it because they stuck out so much to me even as a kid. I was like how did these verses get on the golden plates exactly as the king James bible.

Nope. Hard as I tried, I just couldn't get past the "it came to pass" at the beginning of every verse. That annoyed me so
completely that I never did get involved in the ridiculousness of the narrative. It annoyed me so completely that I never did even fall asleep trying to read it.

There are definitely a sh#tload of 'it came to pass' in that book.

Once cover to cover before my mission and then another two times cover to cover on my mission.

We had a pretty good program in my mission for scripture reading. We were required on a daily basis to read an entire chapter every morning as a group, taking turns reading one page each. Usually we always lived in apartments or houses where there were at least 4 or more missionaries.

That program resulted in every missionary reading each of the standard works cover to cover during their mission.

It was an eye-opener. I didn't realize how much crap there was in the scriptures until I read them all cover to cover. Usually, sermons, talks, lessons and the like cherry pick the best parts and ignore the rest.

Reading the scriptures cover to cover only ranks below my experience in the temple among the factors that made me realize it was all a crock o' sheet.

I don't even know how many times I read it. I'd read it straight through and then I'd start at the beginning and read it straight through again. Over and over again. Ugh.

I first tried to read the BoM when I was eight and had received a copy when I was baptized. My mom told me it had the instructions on how to live a good life. I decided I would go through the book, pull out the key concepts and right them down on my brown paper school writing pad. I think I made it through about three pages.

Finally, on my mission, I read the BoM and the Bible, cover to cover, back to back. I was struck by how the Bible really presented an ancient context and culture. In large parts it is so alien as to be incomprehensible, but still expressing authentic voices from the ancient past with echoes of an even more ancient history. In contrast, the BoM came across as an 19th century piece of tract writing trying to masquerade as history as possibly imagined by its 19th century audience. It was just another brick torn from my wall.

I read about one-third of the BOM as an investigator in the mid-1970s.
And it came to pass that it was revealed to me that this book was written in self-conscious imitation of the very style of the King James Bible; and that long passages of it were copied, yea, even word-for-word, from the King James Version of the Book of Isaiah; and verily, that it contained many historical anachronisms, and inaccuracies, and physical impossibilities.
And it came to pass that the Missionaries did bear their testimonies and depart in sorrow with their quotas unfilled yet again; and, further, that my conversion was put on hold; where it remaineth, even unto this day.

Yes.

“Cureloms and Cummums” (sp) is what let me know it was a fairytale.

I read it in high school for my mom to make up for the fact that I skipped seminary more often than I attended. It is by far the most difficult book to make it through that I have ever opened, and I've read many medical textbooks. Give me WAR AND PEACE or LES MIS any day.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/30/2018 03:38PM by scmd1.

I've read War and Peace and The Brothers Karamazov, but have never managed to read two pages consecutively of the BOM.

Never read any of the standard works cover to cover, and I was born into it and stayed until I was 32 years old. I read most of it I’m sure, but never once straight through. I lied about it all the time. They bored me to tears and I was sure I was not a good church member because I didn’t love reading my scriptures.

Sounds like my story. Never read any of it and never paid much attention to anything that was taught or preached. Walked away 2 months after I was ordained an elder.

I not only found it ULTRA-boring! but so did my grandchildren as I sat in on several before-bed-book-of-mormon-scripture-torture trying hard not to laugh out loud. Each sit in was the same and went something like this:

The smallest, a two year old sound asleep, a five year old attempting to poke the two year old awake, the eight year old trying to hide the fact he had legos he was having fun with, and two teenagers rolling their eyes signaling that between them this charade of spirituality couldn't end fast enough.

The only time I saw a smile other than my own was when the closing prayer was announced. I believe every one of them would have volunteered to pray to get the ordeal over with.

Hallelujah and Praise the Heavens! We get to go to bed!

The two worst books I ever read were Main Kampf and The Book of Mormon. Samuel Clemens wasn't kidding when he said the BoM was chloroform in print.

Yes, I read it.

ANd the bible.

and the pearl of great price.

and the D&C.

and all the ensigns.

and Miracle of Forgiveness

etc.
etc.

The more I read the more questions.

and it was hard to deal with the contradictions.


"and it came to pass"

and stories that were supposedly true that went against logic. ie. the Korihor story. and a whole tribe fighting until the last dude. etc.

But, you push all that down. and keep pushing.

I'm sorry to say I have. Multiple times.
My parents also read it aloud to us at least a couple of times. I liked it better when they read Harry Potter aloud.

As a kid my parents had us get up early for scripture study. This was only on school days, but the idea was we would read a certain portion each day so that by the end of the year we had read the whole thing. Still incredibly boring, but at least tolerable.
Later, my now ex wife got the BofM on cd so I could listen to it on my almost 2 hr drive to and from work (she actually read it). I got through it pretty quick doing it that way. I think it goes down easier if you are passively listening to it.

Both occasions were in response to a BofM challenge by TSCC.

I've read it cover to cover at least once. I'm sure many active mormons haven't, but many have. And many have several times.

20X cover to cover, plus lots of in depth study trying to discover and unlock the keys to personal revelation.

Sigh...

And it came to pass that Jimbo read the BOM and found that it was exceedingly made up nonsense

I got nothing out of it - of course nothing was put in it in the first place.

M@t

Excellent point, M@t !

I seem to remember having read the whole thing when seminary age, but may be misremembering.

Yes, a few times. It helped me get to sleep, actually. All those chapters of Alma was such a SLOG to get through.

I just let it go.

As a young adult I read the BoM cover to cover at least three chapters a night. Read the bible the same way preceding my reading of the BoM. So I can say have read both.

I still keep the bible in my home. The BoM went the way of the landfill.

Don't even want it in the house as a reference because it isn't what it purports to be.

In my Stake, we were challenged to read it from beginning to

end and then start over again. we were promised some sort of

blessings if we did that so I did it. I felt really good that

I was doing it. Now as I look back on it I finally realize

how brainwashed I was.