I found an unusual discrepancy with the Book of Moses among different Mormon sects.

Joseph Smith “translated” the bible after he wrote the Book of Mormon in the 1830s and 1840s. I won’t get too far into the details, but it added entire swatches to the Old Testament and changed a couple wordings. Smith never declared it “finished” in his lifetime. After he passed away Emma Smith ended up with the manuscript.

In 1845 a man named John Milton Bernhisel asked Emma if he could read the manuscript. He did and copied some of it down. Afterwards he followed Brigham Young to Utah in 1848. These notes would go on to be published in a newspaper in Utah. In 1851 Apostle Franklin D. Richards included these notes in the first edition of the Pearl of Great Price and it was called “The Book of Moses (I’ll abbreviate to BoM for convenience).

Emma Smith gave the manuscript to the RLDS church (now Community of Christ) in 1866. The next year they published the first version of the “Inspired Version of the Holy Scriptures”.

Here’s where it gets really interesting: Book of Moses has things that the Inspired Version doesn’t, specifically chapters 1 & 7. However, those chapters are included in CoC’s D&C as sections 22 and 36. The only Mormon sect to have all of it in one cohesive place is the Remnant movement (Snufferites).

I asked some CoC folks why this is, and lifelong members had never even realized this, let alone tell me why. It’s a fascinating piece of Mormon history that I haven’t seen talked about anywhere else.