The Old Testament

In the Beginning

Genesis 1–2 read with Moses and Abraham open beside it

Four accounts of one creation, and a Hebrew text that never says God made the world out of nothing. What Genesis actually claims, what the Restoration adds, and why "organised" rather than "created from nothing" changes the doctrine of matter, spirit, and humankind.

Genesis 1–2; Moses 2–3; Abraham 4–555 min4 sections

The Garden and the Choice

Genesis 3 with Moses 4 and 2 Nephi 2

The chapter that historic Christianity reads as the origin of human ruin, and the Restoration reads as a necessary step. The Hebrew of Genesis 3 is stranger and more careful than either tradition's summary of it.

Genesis 2:15–3:24; Moses 3–550 min4 sections

The Covenant That Holds the Canon Together

Abraham, and the promise made to him

Land, seed, and blessing — three promises made to one childless man, renewed across four chapters, and still being carried out. Everything from Sinai to the modern gathering of Israel is a working-out of this covenant.

Genesis 12; 15; 17; 22; Abraham 1–255 min5 sections

A Lamb for a House

Passover, and the meal that keeps being kept

A rite instituted on the last night of slavery, designed from the start to be re-enacted, and answered fourteen centuries later on a Friday afternoon in Jerusalem. The details are not decoration — nearly every one of them is claimed by the New Testament.

Exodus 12; Luke 22; John 1945 min4 sections

The Mountain and the Covenant

Exodus 19–24, and what a nation agreed to

Israel arrives at a mountain three months out of Egypt and is offered terms. The Ten Commandments are the famous part; the covenant ceremony around them is the part that explains what the commandments are for, and why a second, lesser law followed.

Exodus 19–20; Exodus 24; Deuteronomy 5; JST Exodus 34:1–245 min4 sections

A Sound of Thin Silence

1 Kings 17–19, and what happened after the fire fell

A prophet wins the most public contest in the Old Testament and then, the following day, sits under a juniper tree and asks to die. What God does about it is the reason this chapter is in scripture, and the Hebrew of the famous phrase is stranger than the English.

1 Kings 17–19; Malachi 4:5–6; D&C 110:13–1640 min4 sections

The Servant

Isaiah 52:13–53:12, and what the Hebrew actually says

Fifteen verses written seven centuries before the crucifixion that read, to Christian eyes, like a report from the scene. The Hebrew is sharper than the King James, the Jewish reading deserves a hearing, and Abinadi's exposition adds something neither tradition supplies.

Isaiah 52:13–53:12; Mosiah 14–15; Acts 8:26–3950 min4 sections