Okay, so tell us a little bit about the book of Moses, and how it, you know, where it came from and how we might learn something applying higher criticism to it.

So the book of Moses is a complicated book actually because it starts off as an individual

revelation.

It's now included as part of Joseph Smith's inspired translation of the Bible.

But originally...

Where did the text, the original... Where did Joseph claim it came from?

The Book of Moses?

As it's identified as a revelation.

So he doesn't have a manuscript.

It all comes just from his mind.

From revelation, it's identified specifically as a revelation,

and that would be Moses chapter one.

And what that does is it provides a new introduction, a new Zitzenlaben. I'll use that term again. A new setting in life for the

opening chapters of Genesis. It takes the creation stories. It takes Adam and Eve, all of that material and puts it into the context of a revelation that

Moses receives on an exceedingly high mountain, and then he is then commanded to write a book about.

So it takes the tradition of Mosaic authorship of the Pentatuke and canonizes it in LDS thought. And we've just discussed the fact that

well Moses didn't write that material so it changes its meaning but what I show in the book is I don't think that that's a bad

thing as long as we recognize that a change is taking place from the way that these

sources functioned in antiquity. And the way that it changes it, I argue in the book, is that it changes it to an endowment experience or a temple revelation.

That's what an exceedingly high mountain is and how one functioned in the ancient world.

It was a connection between heaven and earth. and how one functioned in the ancient world.

It was a connection between heaven and earth.

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