Joseph Smith and the Text of Genesis Twice, Joseph Smith completely reworked the opening chapters of Genesis, once in the Book of Moses, and once again in the Book of Abraham. Then, in two discourses delivered in his final months, he again made significant modifications to the first verse of Genesis. This paper compares Joseph’s differing versions of the creation story, first with one another, and then with the text of Genesis as it existed at the time of Jesus, as witnessed by the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Samaritan Pentateuch, and the Greek Septuagint. Do any of Smith’s changes find ancient textual support? What can current methods of textual and redaction criticism tell us about what Smith was doing?