Sources & method

What this is

A personal study hall, built on the shape of an Institute manual: the text first, then the setting it was written into, then the Hebrew or Greek underneath the English, then the doctrine it carries. 40 lessons, 40 doctrinal topics, 109 lexicon entries, 25 reference chains and 96 mastery passages, all compiled into the app itself so it works with no network.

The commitment throughout is to say what the text says, name the source, and mark the difference between the two. Where a reading is contested — the date of the Exodus, the Hebrew of Isaiah 7:14, the corporate reading of the Servant, what “after all we can do” means — the app states the disagreement rather than picking a side quietly.

What this is not

It is not an official publication of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and nothing here carries any authority beyond the sources it cites. It is not a substitute for the scriptures themselves; every reference links out to the actual text for that reason. And it is not a replacement for the counsel of people who actually know you.

Sources

• The standard works

  Every scripture quotation is from a public-domain edition — the King James Version for the Bible, and the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants and Pearl of Great Price as published by the Church. Every reference printed here links to the passage in the Church's own library.

• Gospel Topics and Gospel Topics Essays

  The Church's own treatment of doctrinal subjects, and — in the essays — of the historical questions that are genuinely difficult. Where a lesson here touches one of those, the essay is cited rather than paraphrased away.

• Institute and Seminary manuals

  The structural model for this whole app: front matter, setting, sections, principles, and a check at the end.

• The Joseph Smith Papers

  The documentary record of the Restoration. Where an account was written years after the event, this app says so.

• Doctrinal Mastery Core Document (2023)

  The source of the 96 mastery passages and their key scripture phrases — twenty-four in each of the four seminary courses.

• Standard lexical works

  Hebrew and Greek entries follow the consensus of the standard reference works — Brown-Driver-Briggs and HALOT for Hebrew, BDAG and Louw-Nida for Greek — with Strong's numbers given so any claim can be checked against a concordance.