← The Book of Mormon, in modern American English
About this edition
A personal, opinionated reading edition of the Book of Mormon in modern American English — drafted from a written style guide, checked verse by verse, and always presented beside the original text.
The story
I've read the Book of Mormon my whole life, and I love how it sounds. But I kept meeting people — my own kids among them — for whom the 1830s English was a wall between them and the story. Alma's counsel to his sons, Nephi's grief and grit, the Lord's own voice to a scattered people: it's all in there, and too many readers never get past "it came to pass."
So I made the edition I wished existed: the complete Book of Mormon in plain, warm, modern American English, in natural paragraphs — with every verse still aligned to the original text, one tap away, because the original is the point. This is a reading edition and a study aid, not a replacement.
To be clear: this is my personal project. It isn't published, endorsed, or reviewed by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and for church classes, talks, and doctrine the official editions at churchofjesuschrist.org are the standard, full stop. But the Church has long taught that the word should reach people "after the manner of their language" (D&C 1:24), and its newest guidance warmly allows modern translations for personal Bible study. In that same spirit — as one member's offering, checked verse by verse — I hope this helps the book reach you. Read a chapter and see.
— Dan
About the name. This is the American Modern English Style (AMES) Edition. The acronym is a small joke the author couldn't resist — it spells his own surname, Ames — but it's also honest: this is a personal, opinionated edition, and the name says so. The complete Nephi-to-Moroni text shipped as v1.6 in August 2026, so the edition is no longer being filled in; it now iterates. Version 1.7 is current, and every chapter carries the version it shipped under.
How it was made
The starting text is the public-domain 1830-lineage Book of Mormon — Project Gutenberg #17 — parsed into one file per book, 15 books and 6,604 verses, verse-aligned so nothing can quietly drift out of place. No text from the copyrighted modern LDS editions is used anywhere in this project.
Dan wrote the rules first. The style guide was worked out by drafting sample chapters in several voices, marking them up by hand, and distilling the patterns into a written document — how narration should sound, how divine speech should sound, which words get modernized and which never do. Alongside it sits the Protected Phrase Registry: 176 phrasings kept verbatim across the whole edition, added only on Dan's ruling.
The drafting itself was done with Anthropic's Claude — the Fable and Opus models — run through Claude Code, following that rule set chapter by chapter. Every regeneration is then linted by a QA pass that checks verse alignment, scans for archaic markers left behind, enforces the registry, and flags drift between versions.
Then a person reads it. Every verse in this edition has been read and ratified by Dan personally against the meaning of the original. That review is the actual product; the drafting is scaffolding. It also runs in a loop: Dan marks up chapters, rules on the questions that surface, the ruling is written into the style guide or the registry, and the text is regenerated so the fix applies from the first verse to the last.
That shape — disclosed use of AI, a human accountable for every line, the machine doing research and editing support rather than the spiritual work — is the same shape as the Church's own published principles for artificial intelligence, which ask that such tools "support and not supplant" our connection with God and never replace "the gift of divine inspiration." Those principles govern the Church's own work, not this project; the resemblance is deliberate, but it is not an endorsement.
Where this fits
For church use, the official editions govern. The General Handbook asks that Church settings use the Church's published scriptures, while noting that "Other Bible translations may also be used." That has long been the tone: the First Presidency's 1992 statement on the King James Version, which remains the Church's English Bible, acknowledged in the same breath that "other Bible versions may be easier to read."
The guidance revised in December 2025 goes further for personal study: members "can confidently gain insights from multiple translations" — several modern English Bibles are named — and the reasoning is grounded in the promise that the Lord speaks to people "after the manner of their language" (D&C 1:24). Plain language is not a concession; it is how the word is supposed to travel. The Church itself publishes a simplified-language retelling of the Book of Mormon for readers who need one.
This edition applies that spirit to personal study of the Book of Mormon. The side-by-side layout exists so the original always has the last word: tap any verse and the 1830-lineage text is right there, unchanged.
And now the caution, stated plainly. The guidance above concerns Bible translations and AI tools in general. None of it endorses modern renderings of the Book of Mormon, and none of it endorses this project. We cite it as context and spirit, never as authorization. For doctrine, for teaching, and for church settings, the official editions are the standard.
Versioning
Every chapter carries a version number, and it means something specific: the ruleset the chapter was drafted and ratified under. A chapter marked v1.7 was generated from the style guide and registry as they stood at that release and read through by Dan under those rules.
The minor number bumps whenever the rules themselves change — a new ruling written into the style guide, or an entry added, amended, or removed in the Protected Phrase Registry. Because the text is regenerated from those rules, a single ruling can improve thousands of verses at once, which is why rule changes, not verse edits, drive the version number.
The edition-wide version shown on this site is simply the highest version among the chapters currently published: v1.7.
License & citation
The original 1830-lineage Book of Mormon text is in the public domain (Project Gutenberg #17); no one owns it. This modern rendering is © 2026 Dan Ames and is shared under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 — you're welcome to reuse or adapt it for any purpose, including commercially, as long as you give credit and note any changes.
Ames, D.P., 2026, The Book of Mormon: American Modern English Style (AMES) Edition, v. 1.7, https://bom.danames.com, accessed 8/6/2026.
Help make it better
If a verse reads wrong to you, a note on that single verse is welcome. But the most valuable feedback is a suggested change to the rules themselves. Because the whole edition is generated from this rule set, a good rule change can be applied from the first verse to the last in the next version — improving thousands of verses at once rather than one at a time. Rule-level feedback compounds. Suggest a rule change or a verse fix.