Abstract: This contribution focuses on the earliest and one of the most significant chapters of the Book of Moses: Moses 1, sometimes called the “Visions of Moses.” Kent Jackson summarizes the sources available relating to the production of this chapter, illuminating obscure corners of its often misunderstood background with his extensive knowledge of the history, manuscripts, and significance of the Joseph Smith Translation.

 
[Editor’s Note: Part of our book chapter reprint series, this article is reprinted here as a service to the LDS community. Original pagination and page numbers have necessarily changed, otherwise the reprint has the same content as the original.
See Kent P. Jackson, “The Visions of Moses and Joseph Smith’s Bible Translation,” in “To Seek the Law of the Lord”: Essays in Honor of John W. Welch, ed. Paul Y. Hoskisson and Daniel C. Peterson (Orem, UT: The Interpreter Foundation, 2017), 161–70. Further information at https://interpreterfoundation.org/books/to-seek-the-law-of-the-lord-essays-in-honor-of-john-w-welch-2/.]

Joseph Smith’s New Translation of the Bible covers the entire Bible but not with equal emphasis. The most extensive and dramatic additions to the text are found in Genesis and were revealed in the first months of the translation. Because of the lack of conclusive historical sources for much of the summer and fall of 1830, there are unanswered questions about the earliest stages of the translation work. In this paper I do not argue a thesis but simply describe and discuss the evidence. I identify [Page 90]some of the questions about the early translation and attempt to show what can and cannot be said in response to those questions.1
In June 1830, two months after the Church of Christ was organized, Joseph Smith dictated the first pages. They are recorded on a manuscript that archivists call Old Testament Manuscript 1 because it is the earliest of the extant manuscripts of the translation.2 The first nine pages of this document are in the hand of Oliver Cowdery. At the top of page 1 is a heading that was likely supplied by Cowdery: “A Revelation given to Joseph the Revelator June 1830.” The text itself starts with the title, “The words of God which he gave <spake> unto Moses at a time when Moses was caught up into an exceeding high Mountain. …” Over much of its history, this revelation, found on pages 1–3 of the manuscript, has been called the Visions of Moses. It was first published in 1843 in the Church’s periodical Times and Seasons.3 It was then published in 1851 in the Millennial Star and included in the British Mission pamphlet, The Pearl of Great Price. In 1880 it was canonized along with the rest of that collection. It is now chapter 1 of the Book of Moses.
The Visions and Genesis
The Visions of Moses has no Bible counterpart. It is not an expansion of any biblical verse or a revision of any biblical passage. Much of its content deals with themes hardly mentioned in the Old and New Testaments. It is uniquely Latter-day Saint in its teachings and is one of the most distinctive and significant texts of the Restoration. But the nature of the document leads to this question: Is it part of the New Translation of the Bible? The scribal title, “A Revelation given to Joseph the Revelator June 1830,” may suggest that Joseph Smith was not aware of its relationship [Page 91]to the Bible initially, though that relationship became apparent in due time. The Prophet and his associates treated the revelation as something diffe...