This article is part of a series on Contradictions between the Book of Mormon and the Bible. Click on the link to access a brief overview of the series. 

About three-fourths of the Book of Mormon concerns the history of the Nephites over a period of nearly six centuries prior to the birth of Christ. If the Nephites had scrupulously followed the Mosaic Law during much of those six centuries, it doesn’t show in the Book of Mormon narrative. For example, although the Book of Mormon has many references to Nephite temples, it never refers to any of the distinctive elements of the tabernacle or of the temple in Old Testament religion. Note how often the following terms for such features are found in the Bible but that are never mentioned in the Book of Mormon:

• lamp (9)
• laver (15; also translated basin)
• mercy seat (28)
• cherubim (49, specifically in the context of the manmade temple)
• (Most) Holy Place (57)
• incense (about 90, plus about 40 referring to incense offered to false gods)
• ark (197, including “ark of the covenant,” “ark of the Lord,” “ark of the testimony,” etc.)

Nor does the Book of Mormon ever use the term feast(s) in reference to religious observances or refer to the various specific feasts of Mosaic religion. We list them here with the number of explicit references in the Bible (there are more biblical references to these observances that do not use these specific terms): 

• Trumpets (2)
• Day of Atonement (5)
• Weeks, also called Firstfruits, Harvest, Pentecost (9)
• Booths or Tabernacles (10)
• Unleavened Bread (16)
• Passover (79)

LDS scholars have argued for implicit references in the Book of Mormon to some of these feasts. For example, John Welch comments that the one clear reference in the Book of Mormon to the Nephites observing “the sabbath day” (Jarom 1:5) might also have been referring to “the holy days such as Passover, Pentecost, and the Day of Atonement, for those days were also holy days under the law of Moses,” and the Day of Atonement was even called “a sabbath of rest unto you” (Leviticus 16:31).¹ Frankly, Welch’s interpretation is too implausible to take seriously. The specific expression “the sabbath day” always refers to the seventh-day observance in both the Bible (some 55 times in the KJV) and elsewhere in the Book of Mormon (Mosiah 13:16, 19, 23, cf. 13:18).

Welch also tries to associate Benjamin’s speech outside a temple (Mosiah 2–5) with the Day of Atonement, drawing tenuous parallels to Leviticus 16 and to rabbinical texts about the observance (dating hundreds of years after the Old Testament era) in order to make the connection seem plausible.² Benjamin does refer six times to Christ’s blood as atoning or the atonement for sins (Mosiah 3:11, 15, 16, 19; 4:6, 7), but he never relates this teaching to an existing practice under the Law of Moses, let alone one being performed at that time (cf. 3:14–16). Mosiah 1–5 does not mention priests, let alone a high priest (see Mosiah 6:3, where Benjamin appoints priests after his speech). The Book of Mormon says that the people “took of the firstlings of their flocks, that they might offer sacrifice and burnt offerings, according to the law of Moses” (Mosiah 2:3). This is the only reference to sacrifice in Mosiah 1–5, but it makes it clear that this is anything but the Day of Atonement, in which according to Leviticus 16 the high priest offered one sacrifice for the sins of all the people.

We noted earlier that the Book of Mormon contains numerous references to priests and a priesthood (under various expressions, including “holy order”). Oddly, though, these texts do not report the priests performing the services characteristic of priests in the Old Testament. Only one text mentions priests in such a connection, and it comes in a criticism made by the false teacher Korihor criticizing “foolish ordinances and performances which are laid down by ancient priests” (Alma 30:23). In the Book of Mormon, priests are represented as religious rulers and especially as teachers, with numerous references to teaching as their primary function (2 Nephi 5:26; 28:4; Jacob 1:18–19; Jarom 1:11; Mosiah 6:3; 12:25; 18:18–20, 26; 23:17; 25:19–21; Alma 1:26; 4:18–20; 8:23–24; 13:1–2, 6, 18; 16:18; 23:4; Moroni 3:1–3).

The Book of Mormon lacks any mention of the Nephites observing other requirements of the Law of Moses. For example, it never mentions them performing circumcision, and never comments on the issue, though it twice quotes Isaiah about those who are “uncircumcised” (Isaiah 52:1, in 2 Nephi 8:24; 3 Nephi 20:36) and in two other places condemns the “uncircumcised of heart” (2 Nephi 9:33; Helaman 9:21). Yet at the very end of the Book of Mormon there is a statement announcing the end of the law requiring circumcision (Moroni 8:8)! By contrast, circumcision or the lack of it is mentioned prominently in the Pentateuch, which contains the Law of Moses (Genesis 17:10–27; 21:4; 34:14–24; Exodus 4:26; 6:12, 30; 12:44, 48; Leviticus 12:3; 19:23), and which also speaks of the “circumcision” of the heart (Leviticus 26:41; Deuteronomy 10:16; 30:6). Circumcision and uncircumcision are mentioned many times in the rest of the Old Testament (Joshua 5:2–8; 14:3; 15:18; 1 Samuel 14:6; 17:26, 36; 31:4; 2 Samuel 1:20; 1 Chronicles 10:4; Isaiah 52:1; Jeremiah 6:10; 9:25–26, cf. 4:4; Ezekiel 28:10; 31:18; 32:19–32; 44:7, 9).

The Book of Mormon also lacks any reference to Nephites observing, or being expected to observe, statutes in the Law of Moses about what is clean and unclean, although the term “unclean” is used in a moral or spiritual sense over twenty times. It also contains no references to Nephites practicing tithing, which in the Law of Moses was of crucial importance in supporting the priesthood and the sacrificial system (Leviticus 27:30–32; Number 18:24–28; Deuteronomy 12:6–17; 14:22–28; 26:12; see also 2 Chronicles 31:5–12; Nehemiah 10:37–38; etc.). The Book of Mormon mentions tithing only in reference to Abraham paying tithes to Melchizedek (Alma 13:15) and in a quotation from Malachi (3 Nephi 24:8, 10, quoting Malachi 3:8, 10).

In light of such surprising lack of references to Mosaic practices, LDS apostle and scholar Bruce McConkie acknowledges that the Book of Mormon narrative indicates that the Nephites did not practice the observances required by the Law of Moses:

We know the Nephites offered sacrifices and kept the law of Moses. Since they held the Melchizedek Priesthood and there were no Levites among them, we supposetheir sacrifices were those that antedated the ministry of Moses and that, since they had the fulness of the gospel itself, they kept the law of Moses in the sense that they conformed to its myriad moral principles and its endless ethical restrictions. We supposethis would be one of the reasons Nephi was able to say, “The law hath become dead unto us.” (2 Ne. 25:25.) There is, at least, no intimation in the Book of Mormon that the Nephites offered the daily sacrifices required by the law or that they held the various feasts that were part of the religious life of their Old World kinsmen.³

Other aspects of the Law of Moses are barely mentioned at all in the Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon mentions the Nephites performing sacrifices or offerings to the Lord only four times (1 Nephi 2:7; 5:9; 7:22; Mosiah 2:3; cf. Alma 34:10; 3 Nephi 9:19). Welch makes as much as he can of these few texts but offers no explanation for the sparsity of these references.⁴ By contrast, in just the books of the Old Testament that follow the Pentateuch, we find well over four hundred references to the Israelites giving sacrifices and offerings. The Sabbath is mentioned in the Book of Mormon just five times in two passages, three of those references in a quotation of the Ten Commandments (Jarom 1:5; Mosiah 13:16, 18, 19, 23). In the Old Testament following the books of Moses, there are thirty-six references to the Sabbath.

The absence of references to this or that feature of the Mosaic Law would not in and of itself prove anything. However, the pervasive lack of references to numerous features, along with extremely meager references to other key features, provides a strong cumulative case. This evidence shows a clear lack of interest in the Nephites’ practice of the Law of Moses in the nearly six hundred years before the coming of Christ.