Claim 6 of 9 · Case 11 · Mormonism
The claim that “plain and precious things” were removed from the Bible has no manuscript support: the New Testament text is well preserved, and the Joseph Smith Translation’s changes match no known copy.
One claim from the free evidence repository at apologetics.pro.
Latter-day Saints accept the Bible “as far as it is translated correctly” (Articles of Faith 8) and hold that “many plain and precious things” were taken from it (1 Nephi 13:28), which is one reason the church says a Restoration was needed. On its face the Article is ordinary caution; the texts around it make a much larger claim, about transmission rather than translation. The response is not to insist the Bible is flawless but to ask a simple question: corrupted compared to what earlier standard? The loss would have to predate every manuscript, version and quotation by an early writer, yet the manuscript record shows a text copied so many times, in so many places, that scholars can compare copies and recover the wording with confidence. The specifically Latter-day Saint doctrines said to have been removed are absent from all early Christian literature, including sources hostile to the mainstream, and the Joseph Smith Translation’s changes have no manuscript support of any kind.
Backed by 4 pieces of evidence
The corruption explanation (the Latter-day Saint view)
This is the competing explanation, stated in its own terms so it is not a strawman. The response is that to claim something was removed, you need an earlier, purer text to measure against, and no such lost standard has been produced.
Gregory-Aland catalog, Institute for New Testament Textual Research, and the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts
This is the checkable evidence behind that response. The often-repeated “5,000 manuscripts” figure is out of date. About 5,800 Greek manuscripts is the number the research institute actually maintains and updates. Honest limit: that the manuscripts are abundant and the text recoverable is broadly agreed, while the stronger claim that no variant touches any core doctrine is the majority scholarly view, associated with Daniel Wallace and Bruce Metzger, and is emphasized differently by critics such as Bart Ehrman. The point here stands on the reliability and stability of the text, not on denying that variants exist.
Articles of Faith 8
This is the exact source of the qualified view of the Bible, word for word, and it shows the qualifier applies to the Bible in a way it doesn’t apply to LDS scripture.
1 Nephi 13:28, Book of Mormon
This shows the “translated correctly” qualifier is not vague caution but a specific teaching that content was removed. It gives the doctrinal basis for the later objection that the Bible was corrupted.