FAIR is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing well-documented answers to criticisms of the doctrine, practice, and history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The Book of Moses and the Documentary Hypothesis
Book of Moses > The Book of Moses and the Documentary Hypothesis
The Book of Moses and the Documentary Hypothesis
Summary: The Documentary Hypothesis is a theory proposed by many Bible scholars, which suggests that the first five books of the Bible were composed from multiple written sources that were subsequently edited and combined over time. Scholars point to changes in writing style, repeated stories, and different names for God as clues. The Book of Moses is a text given to Joseph Smith that expands and restores teachings found in the early chapters of the Bible, especially about the Creation, Adam and Eve, and God’s plan for humanity. It is included in the Pearl of Great Price in the Latter-day Saint scriptural canon. The text of the Book of Moses is traditionally understood to have been written entirely by the prophet Moses. If the first fives books of the Bible were written from multiple sources, why does the Book of Moses represent them as more unified?
The Book of Moses is a Revealed Text, the Documentary Hypothesis Describes the Bible as it Exists Today
From a Latter-day Saint perspective, the Book of Moses represents a more unified narrative because it is understood as a revealed text focused on restoring prophetic teaching rather than preserving the full, layered history of how ancient records developed. The Documentary Hypothesis describes the Bible as it exists today—a text shaped by centuries of transmission, editing, and combination of sources—while the Book of Moses is seen as God revealing core truths He wanted emphasized, without the later editorial seams that scholars now detect in Genesis. In this view, the unity of the Book of Moses does not deny multiple ancient sources; instead, it reflects a divine act of selection and clarification, where revelation presents a coherent theological message rather than a documentary history of how the text came to be.
Additionally, Latter-day Saints do not require the Book of Moses to be understood as a direct reproduction of everything Moses wrote or how ancient Israelites recorded scripture. Rather, it can be seen as a prophetic restoration that re-centers the narrative on Moses’ vision of God, humanity’s purpose, and the plan of salvation. The Bible, shaped by many hands over time, preserves traces of different voices, while the Book of Moses presents a single, prophetic voice because its purpose is different: to teach doctrine clearly and authoritatively. In this way, unity in the Book of Moses reflects its revelatory function, not a rejection of scholarly models about the Bible’s composition.