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FAIR is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing well-documented answers to criticisms of the doctrine, practice, and history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Some have wondered, based upon findings from Biblical scholarship, if Moses is an actual person from history. His presence during Biblical events is not extremely important to Latter-day Saints. What is most important to Latter-day Saints is that he existed, received the priesthood, and that he gave the keys of priesthood he held to Joseph Smith in April 1836 (D&C 110). Biblical scholarship doesn’t rule out the possibility of Moses’ existence or of a Moses-like figure in history—it only doubts that a lot of the miracles ascribed to him occurred (which is a natural skepticism). Biblical scholars generally see several things that can help affirm some sort of existence. Among these are his authentic Egyptian name (“moseh”) meaning “is born”, the evidence for some form of Israelite exodus, and so on. It has been said that even if none of the traditions of the Pentateuch originaited from Moses, scholars would still have to posit his existence since Israelite religion seems a deliberate innovation, not a natural outgrowth[1].
We could simply defend the existence of Moses from his appearance to Joseph Smith but in order to defend against the counter of that vision being subjective, we’d need to provide evidence for his calling. The most convincing evidence of that calling is that of the Book of Mormon which can be defended vigorously as authentic and has been for roughly the last century[2].
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