KJV Bible
The Book of Mormon -- Another Testament of Jesus Christ
Doctrine & Covenants
Pearl of Great Price
These Iron Rod ASCII Scriptures were created through the efforts of many volunteers. Although every effort was made to be as accurate as possible, these files may still contain errors. Therefore, be sure to consult a post-1982 printed version of the Scriptures if accuracy is important. The printed version always takes precedence.
The idea for a freeware, searchable version of the scriptures was hatched on the old LDS mailing list (the original LDS resource on the Internet) in 1989. Many of the list members and other volunteers typed the text in by hand. The most common procedure was to have someone read out loud while a second person typed. The KJV Bible came from Purdue's Personal Computing Learning Resource Center IBM software collection. In February of 1990 the LDS Church's Copyright and Permissions Office was contacted about the effort. The Church was neutral about the effort; but emphasized that we must be clear that this was an unofficial publication, and that we could not use the new scripture study aids or chapter summaries--only the verses themselves. The beta release was placed for anonymous ftp in 1990. On 9 June 1991 we posted the first official release. We were pleased when it showed up on one of the early mega-archives on the Internet, the wiretap.spies.com gopher archive; we were even more pleased when it was placed on the ultimate Internet site at the time: Oakland University's Simtel archive.
During the summer of 1999, I began the process of making the corrections that had been sent over the years. I then began to compare the Iron Rod to other resources that are now available. I used the printed scriptures as the arbiter of any discrepancies I found. Amazingly, the BOM had almost no errors; on the other hand the D&C needed more corrections. I also discovered that although the basic text is almost the same, there is a much wider variation in styles in the KJV texts than I would have ever suspected. I chose to follow the LDS Church's edition, thus causing the most time to be spent on the Bible.
I find it fitting that the date, April 9, 2000, this second release is ready to be released is during the week of the Savior's 2000th birthday.
Many thanks to all who participated in making the Iron Rod ASCII Scriptures possible. I do not have a list of all who participated, but I am only a small part of the effort. I believe the effort to have been worthwhile since I have received many gracious thank-you notes over the years. Many thanks as well to the people who have helped with corrections.
These files are not public domain. They are freely copyable. No charge may be made for them. No changes may be made, except to bring them into conformity with the official version printed by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. The headers to books and chapters (all parts numbered with :0 ) must conform with pre-1979 versions of the scriptures. All of the files in this archive must be kept together when distributing the archive. The Iron Rod ASCII Scriptures may be used and distributed freely for NON-COMMERCIAL, PRIVATE purposes. Uploading to archives is encouraged.
Comments or suggestions are welcome; if you find errors, please point them out to me so I can correct them in the master. Sending me a corrected verse would make me very happy.
Email: ldsguy@ldsworld.com
Home repository: https://members.tripod.com/ldsguy/Iron-rod