Are Mormon Scriptures Historical? David Bokovoy Pt. 3 (Remastered Classic) | Ep. 1877

Are Mormon Scriptures Historical? A Critical Look at Prophetic Creativity

The question sounds simple enough. Did Abraham actually write the Book of Abraham? Did Moses author the Book of Moses? For generations of Latter-day Saints, the answer felt obvious: these were translations of ancient documents, recovered through divine intervention and physical artifacts. Yet biblical scholar David Bokovoy argues that asking whether Mormon scripture is "historical" misses the point entirely. In a recent conversation with Mormon Stories Podcast, Bokovoy suggests that Joseph Smith's productions look exactly like what scholars call pseudepigrapha: sacred texts written in the voice of ancient figures by contemporary authors who believed they were channeling divine truth.

The Book of Moses and Translation Without Source Texts

The Book of Moses presents a unique problem for traditional apologetics. Unlike the Book of Mormon with its golden plates or the Book of Abraham with its Egyptian papyri, Moses arrived without any physical artifact. Joseph Smith produced it as a "revelation," an expansion of Genesis that required no source text whatsoever.

This matters because it establishes a precedent often ignored in faith-promoting narratives. Joseph could and did generate scripture through what he understood as divine inspiration alone. As Bokovoy notes, this undermines the common defense that Joseph needed physical artifacts to produce sacred texts. If Moses came purely through revelation, then the absence of plates or papyri for other works becomes less scandalous and more consistent with Smith's actual method.

The text itself contains elements that reveal its 19th-century origins. Moses prophesies specifically of Joseph Smith by name, a detail that serves to authenticate Smith's prophetic authority while simultaneously marking the text as a product of its creator's immediate religious concerns.