Evidence #487 | March 26, 2025
Book of Moses Evidence: A New Creation Account
Post contributed by
Scripture Central
Abstract
The Book of Moses presents a version of the Creation that differs somewhat from the account in the book of Genesis. Other ancient Jewish and Christian documents give similar accounts of the Creation that deviate from Genesis.One interesting aspect of the Book of Moses is that it features its own account of the Creation in Moses 2–3. This version closely follows the Creation narrative in Genesis 1–2 but also has details not found in the Bible, as seen in the following chart (significant changes bolded):
Genesis 1 | Moses 2 |
1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. 3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. 4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. 5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. | 1 I am the Beginning and the End, the Almighty God; by mine Only Begotten I created these things; yea, in the beginning I created the heaven, and the earth upon which thou standest. 2 And the earth was without form, and void; and I caused darkness to come up upon the face of the deep; and my Spirit moved upon the face of the water; for I am God. 3 And I, God, said: Let there be light; and there was light. 4 And I, God, saw the light; and that light was good. And I, God, divided the light from the darkness. 5 And I, God, called the light Day; and the darkness, I called Night; and this I did by the word of my power, and it was done as I spake; and the evening and the morning were the first day. |
Due to several factors, it is likely impossible to tease out the precise historical relationship between these two texts.1 However, the fact that the Book of Moses features an original Creation account at all is rather intriguing. This is because other ancient documents contain similar Creation narratives. These include creation myths from various ancient Near Easter cultures, as well as Jewish and Christian texts that, like the Book of Moses, present alternative versions of the Creation story found in Genesis.2
For instance, much like the Book of Moses, the book of Jubilees begins with Moses ascending a mountain and receiving a revelation from the Lord. Each text then gives a rendition of the six days of Creation. The chart below compares the first three days in each account:3
Days | Moses 2 | Jubilees 2 |
First Day | 2–5 And the earth was without form, and void; and I caused darkness to come up upon the face of the deep; and my Spirit moved upon the face of the water; for I am God. And I, God, said: Let there be light; and there was light. And I, God, saw the light; and that light was good. And I, God, divided the light from the darkness. And I, God, called the light Day; and the darkness, I called Night; and this I did by the word of my power, and it was done as I spake; and the evening and the morning were the first day. | 2 … And (he created) the abysses and darkness—both the evening and night—and light—both dawn and daylight—which he prepared in the knowledge of his heart. Then we saw his works and we blessed him and offered praise before him on account of all his works because he made seven great works on the first day. … |
Second Day | 6–8 And again, I, God, said: Let there be a firmament in the midst of the water, and it was so, even as I spake; and I said: Let it divide the waters from the waters; and it was done; And I, God, made the firmament and divided the waters, yea, the great waters under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament, and it was so even as I spake. And I, God, called the firmament Heaven; and the evening and the morning were the second day. | 4 And on the second day he made the firmament in the midst of the water. And the waters were divided on that day. One half of them went up above, and one half of them went down beneath the firmament (which is) in the middle over the surface of all of the earth. And he made only this (one) work on the second day. |
Third Day | 9–13 And I, God, said: Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and it was so; and I, God, said: Let there be dry land; and it was so. And I, God, called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters, called I the Sea; and I, God, saw that all things which I had made were good. And I, God, said: Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, the fruit tree yielding fruit, after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed should be in itself upon the earth, and it was so even as I spake. And the earth brought forth grass, every herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed should be in itself, after his kind; and I, God, saw that all things which I had made were good; And the evening and the morning were the third day. | 5–7 On the third day he did as he said to the waters, “Let them pass from the surface of the whole earth into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And the waters did as he said. And they turned aside from upon the surface of the earth into one place outside of this firmament. And dry land appeared. And on that day he created for it all of the seas in each of their gathering places, and all of the rivers, and the gathering places of the waters on the mountains and in all the earth, and all of the ponds, and all of the dew of the earth, and the seed which is sown, and everything which is eaten, and trees which bear fruit and (other) trees, and the garden of Eden in Eden—in (the place of) luxury—and everything. These four great species the Lord made on the third day. |
While the Jubilees version deviates from the Genesis text to a greater degree than the Book of Moses, each day of Creation and its corresponding topic is still covered. An example with even more variation can be found in 2 Enoch. One might notice, however, that this is a first-person account given by the Lord himself, just as in the Book of Moses. Because of the lengthier expansions in 2 Enoch, only the first two of the six days of Creation are compared below:4
Days | Moses 2 | 2 Enoch |
First Day | 2–5 And the earth was without form, and void; and I caused darkness to come up upon the face of the deep; and my Spirit moved upon the face of the water; for I am God. And I, God, said: Let there be light; and there was light. And I, God, saw the light; and that light was good. And I, God, divided the light from the darkness. And I, God, called the light Day; and the darkness, I called Night; and this I did by the word of my power, and it was done as I spake; and the evening and the morning were the first day. | 27:1–4 “And I gave the command: ‘Let there be taken some of the light and some of the darkness.’ And I said, ‘Become thickened, and be wrapped around with light!’ And I spread it out, and it became water. And I spread it out above the darkness, below the light. And thus I made the solid waters, that is to say, the Bottomless. And I made a foundation of light around the water. And I created seven great circles inside it, and I gave them an appearance of crystal, wet and dry, that is to say glass and ice, and to be the circuit for water and the other elements. And I pointed out to each one [of them] his route, to the seven stars, each one of them in his own heaven, so that they might travel accordingly. And I saw how good it was. And I made a division between the light and between the darkness, that is to say, in the middle of the waters, this way and that way. And I said to the light that it should be day, and to the darkness (I commanded) that it should be night. And evening came, and (again) morning came, (that is) the first day.” |
Second Day | 6–8 And again, I, God, said: Let there be a firmament in the midst of the water, and it was so, even as I spake; and I said: Let it divide the waters from the waters; and it was done; And I, God, made the firmament and divided the waters, yea, the great waters under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament, and it was so even as I spake. And I, God, called the firmament Heaven; and the evening and the morning were the second day. | 28:1–5 “And thus I made solid the heavenly circles. And (I said), ‘Let the lower water, which is below heaven, collect itself (into) one collection, and let its waves become dry.’ And it happened like that. And from the waves I created rocks, solid and big. And from the rocks I assembled the dry land; and I called the dry land Earth. And what was in the middle of the earth I called chasm, that is to say, Bottomless. The sea I gathered into one place, and I bound it with a yoke. And I said to the sea: ‘Behold, I give you an eternal boundary. And you will not break through from your own waters.’ And so I fixed the solid structure and established it above the waters. This first-created day I named for myself. Then evening came and (again) morning, and it was the second day.” |
The theme of Creation also turns up repeatedly in 3 Enoch. For instance, after being told of God’s regular creative acts in the heavens which he carries out through his “word,” the heavenly initiate (Rabbi Ishmael) is shown the following:
the letters by which heaven and earth were created;
the letters by which seas and rivers were created;
the letters by which mountains and hills were created;
the letters by which trees and grasses were created;
the letters by which stars and constellations were created;
the letters by which the orb of the moon and the disk of the sun, Orion and
the Pleiades, and all the various luminaries of Raqia were created;
the letters by which the ministering angels were created;
the letters by which the seraphim and the creatures were created;
the letters by which the throne of glory and the wheels of the chariot were created;
the letters by which the necessities of the world were created;
the letters by which wisdom and understanding, knowledge and intelligence,
humility and rectitude were created, by which the whole world is sustained.5
These Enochic Creation accounts are notable because the Book of Moses also includes an expansion about the prophet Enoch, who was caught up to heaven and gained his own understanding of the Creation. At one point, Enoch declared to the Lord, “And were it possible that man could number the particles of the earth, yea, millions of earths like this, it would not be a beginning to the number of thy creations” (Moses 7:30). In another passage, we learn that Enoch “beheld the spirits that God had created; and he beheld also things which were not visible to the natural eye” (Moses 6:36).
A seven-day Creation account also turns up in a document known as the Cave of Treasures:
In the beginning, on the first day, that is, the holy Sunday, chief and firstborn of all days, the Lord made heaven and earth …. On the second day God created the lower heaven and called it “firmament” …. On the third day God commanded those waters underneath the firmament to gather at one place so that the dry land might show itself. …. On the fourth day God made the sun, moon and stars. … On the fifth day God commanded the waters and they brought forth various species of manifold appearances which move, swarm and crawl in the waters …. On the sixth day, that is, Friday, God made Adam from dust and Eve from his side. On the seventh day God rested from his work and called it Sabbath.6
Relevant material also turns up in the Sybilline Oracles. After promising to prophesy of all things, the narrator immediately jumps into a Creation account:
First God bids me tell truly how the world came to be. But you, devious mortal, so that you may never neglect my commands, attentively make known the most high king. It was he who created the whole world, saying, “let it come to be” and it came to be. For he established the earth, draping it around with Tartarus, and he himself gave sweet light. He elevated heaven, and stretched out the gleaming sea, and he crowned the vault of heaven amply with bright-shining stars and decorated the earth with plants. He mixed the sea with rivers, pouring them in, and with the air he mingled fragrances, and dewy clouds. He placed another species, fish, in the seas, and gave birds to the winds; to the woods, also, shaggy wild beasts, and creeping serpents to the earth; and all things which now are seen. He himself made these things with a word, and all came to be, swiftly and truly. For he is self-begotten looking down from heaven. Under him the world has been brought to completion.7
Creation themes turn up prominently in several other early Jewish and Christian documents, even if a formal day-by-day Creation account isn’t always presented.8
Conclusion
Of all the books in the Bible, its only accounts of creation are found together in Genesis 1–2. Thus, if Joseph Smith were simply making up the Book of Moses and using the King James Bible as a guide, there would be little precedent for him to develop his own Creation narrative modeled off of the Genesis account. Yet this is precisely what we find in a wide range of ancient and medieval texts.9 For the most part, such sources wouldn’t have been accessible to Smith, either because they hadn’t been discovered or were obscure and hadn’t yet been translated into English. The novel Creation account found in Moses 2–3 is therefore a feature that might be expected of a genuinely ancient document.
Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, “The Book of Moses as a Temple Text,” Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-Day Saint Faith and Scholarship 49 (2021): 63–112.
Aaron P. Schade and Matthew L. Bowen, “Moses 2: The Purpose and Logistics of Creation,” in The Book of Moses: from the Ancient of Days to the Latter Days (Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Deseret Book), 107‒30.
Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, In God's Image and Likeness 1: Creation, Fall, And the Story of Adam and Eve (Eborn Books, 2009), 61–42.
- 1. These factors include the deep antiquity of these accounts as well as unknowns about their respective origin, transmission, redaction, and translation histories.
- 2. For a treatment of Near Eastern creation myths, see Richard J. Clifford S. J., Creation Accounts in the Ancient Near East and in the Bible, The Catholic Biblical Quarterly Monograph Series 26 (The Catholic Biblical Association of America, 1994).
- 3. Translation by O. S. Wintermute, “Jubilees,” in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, Volume 2: Expansions of the “Old Testament,” ed. James H. Charlesworth (Doubleday, 1985), 55.
- 4. Translation by F. I. Anderson, “2 (Slavonic Apocalypse of) Enoch,” in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, Volume 1, 146.
- 5. Translation by Philip Alexander, “3 (Hebrew Apocalypse of) Enoch,” in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, Volume 1, ed. James H. Charlesworth (Doubleday, 1983), 292.
- 6. Translation by Alexander Toepel, “The Cave of Treasures,” in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, ed. Richard Bauckham, James R. Davila, Alexander Panayotov (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 2013), 540–541.
- 7. Translation by J. J. Collins, “Sibylline Oracles,” in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, Volume 1, 336.
- 8. See, for example, Charlesworth, ed., The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, Volume 1, 533–536, 610–611, 927; Charlesworth, ed., The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, Volume 2, 295–296, 600–601, 748–749.
- 9. Even later medieval texts often preserve much older traditions and material. See Jeffrey M. Bradshaw and Ryan Dahle, “Could Joseph Smith Have Drawn on Ancient Manuscripts When He Translated the Story of Enoch?: Recent Updates on a Persistent Question,” Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 33 (2019): 305–374.