Is the Book of Moses in a “Final” Form?
While I do not think it is necessary to believe that every word in our book of Genesis came from the pen of Moses, I am fully convinced that Joseph Smith made his revisions as the result of a prophetic mandate from God. This being said, I think it would be a mistake to assume that this work of scripture is currently in any sort of “final” form—if indeed such perfection in expression could ever be attained within the confines of what Joseph Smith called our “little, narrow prison, almost as it were, total darkness of paper, pen and ink; and a crooked, broken, scattered and imperfect language.”[iv] As Robert J. Matthews, a pioneer of modern scholarship on the Joseph Smith Translation (JST), aptly put it, “any part of the translation might have been further touched upon and improved by additional revelation and emendation by the Prophet.”[v] Though Joseph Smith was careful in his efforts to render a faithful translation, he was no naïve advocate of the inerrancy or finality of scriptural
