| Catholics/Protestants/Orthodox scriptures are almost entirely the same content. Jewish scriptures are a much smaller subset, while Mormon scriptures are a much larger superset. Specifically: Jewish scripture consists of what is called the "Tanakh" [0], which is the same content as the Protestant Old Testament but in a different order. The Tanakh tells the history of the Jewish people from "origins" to around 500 BC. Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox scripture (generally called "the Bible") consist of everything in the Tanakh, in this case called the "Old Testament", plus the "New Testament" which tells the story of Jesus and his first generation of followers. Additionally, Catholics and Orthodox include other Jewish writings (pre-Jesus) which mostly fill in the gaps between the two narratives [1]. A number of other post-Jesus writings (such as letters written by early Christians, which tell the history of the next generation of the church) are sometimes included as additional reference material. (As a brief aside: among Protestants in particular, there's a tendency to use different "translations" which consist of the same material but use different vocabulary and sentence structure. Generally speaking, which translation is used matters only for doctrinal edge cases.) Mormon scripture consists of the Protestant Old and New Testaments, usually the King James translation, as well as three additional books collectively called the Standard Works [2]. The "Book of Mormon" tells the history of the inhabitants of the Americas. "Doctrine and Covenants" contains official teachings of Mormon leaders, who are considered to be modern-day prophets. "Pearl of Great Price" is kind of a grab bag, consisting of everything from revisions of other parts of the Bible to the controversial "book of Abraham" [3] to the life of Mormon founder Joseph Smith. In addition, Mormons consider their president and his 12 closest advisers to be "prophets, seers, and revelators" [4] whose teachings are more important than scripture. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanakh [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_Canon#Canons_of_various_C... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_works [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Abraham - LDS founder Joseph Smith claims this tells the story of Abraham; Egyptologists say it has nothing to do with Abraham. [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prophet,_seer,_and_revelator |