The Savior shifted to a crucial theme that he would teach and illustrate: “Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets.” The Law and the Prophets are two of the three major parts of the holy scriptures that the people then possessed. The Jews called them the Torah (the Law) and the Nevi’im (the Prophets). The other was called the Ketuvim, the Writings, or poetical works, such as Psalms, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes.
Jesus was not destroying or canceling out all those sacred writings any more than a university professor is destroying basic arithmetic by teaching integral calculus.31 He came not to abolish but to complete. That is the meaning of the Greek term used in the New Testament version of this beatitude. As the Latter-day Saints say to other Christians—or to Jews, Muslims, or anyone else—we do not come to erase any truth you already have but to fulfill, to complete, to add to what you have with the fulness of the everlasting gospel. We say, as the Lord said, “I do not bring it to destroy that which [you] have received, but to build it up” (D&C 10:52). And Joseph Smith declared, “We don’t ask any people to throw away any good they have got; we only ask them to come and get more.”32