Official LDS Essay on Translation and Historicity of the Book of Abraham, Annotated

The following essay is the official LDS released essay entitled "Translation and Historicity of the Book of Abraham." It was released by the church to help explain how it can be possible that Joseph Smith's translation of the Book of Abraham does not match what we now know Egyptian to mean, and how it can still be the word of God when even the church itself admits in this essay that the facsimiles Joseph Smith claimed to have translated by the gift of God are incorrect, and there is no mention of Abraham whatsoever within them. In the below essay, all text in black is the unedited essay from the church essay, with our comments in blue. The essay below can be found on the LDS website here. ​ The annotated essay below is adapted from the following source, who continues to update the material for those who would like to read the original. You can view that by clicking here. ​ Many church leaders in the past have considered the statements in this essay to be "anti-Mormon" with some even ex-communicated for their research into church history. It is important to note that the rise of the internet has forced many of these issues to be addressed in these essay, but as you will see below there are a lot of problems with the Book of Abraham that are not addressed in this essay, and some that are dealt with in ways that are akin to gaslighting. ​ This essay with annotated notes is fairly long, but it is important to include all of this information. Most of the information in the essay is new to many members, and our additional notes are new to almost all members. It is absolutely imperative to get a true picture of what is actually on the papyrus that includes what we are told is the Book of Abraham, as this ties into issues with the Book of Mormon translation as well as the recent study of how Joseph Smith use Adam Clarke's Bible essays heavily in his translation of the Bible (which, again, we were told was inspired by the gift of God). Taken together, there are many questions as to the accuracy of the scriptures that Joseph Smith is responsible for, which opens up many questions about Joseph Smith's authenticity as a prophet.. As prominent LDS historian Richard Bushman noted, "I think that for the Church to remain strong it has to reconstruct its narrative. The dominant narrative is not true; it can’t be sustained. The Church has to absorb all this new information or it will be on very shaky grounds and that’s what it is trying to do and it will be a strain for a lot of people, older people especially. But I think it has to change." ​ As President George Albert Smith said, “If a faith will not bear to be investigated; if its preachers and professors are afraid to have it examined, their foundation must be very weak.” (Journal of Discourses, Volume 14, Page 216) ​ As with all of our material, please email us at ldsdiscussion@gmail.com if you have any issues with our comments or suggestions to add. And without further adieu... ​ Translation and Historicity of the Book of Abraham ​ The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints embraces the book of Abraham as scripture. This book, a record of the biblical prophet and patriarch Abraham, recounts how Abraham sought the blessings of the priesthood, rejected the idolatry of his father, covenanted with Jehovah, married Sarai, moved to Canaan and Egypt, and received knowledge about the Creation. The book of Abraham largely follows the biblical narrative but adds important information regarding Abraham’s life and teachings. The basic problem with the Book of Abraham was obvious to people even in Joseph Smith’s time. In 1837 a non-Mormon writer observed: “Is it possible that a record written by Abraham, and another by Joseph, containing the most important revelation that God ever gave to man, should be entirely lost by the tenacious Israelites, and preserved by the unbelieving Egyptians, and by them embalmed and deposited in the catacombs with an Egyptian priest… I venture to say no, it is not possible. It is more likely that the records are those of the Egyptians.” (William S. West, A Few Interesting Facts Respecting the Rise, Pretensions and Progress of the Mormons, 1837) ​ The book of Abraham was first published in 1842 and was canonized as part of the Pearl of Great Price in 1880. The book originated with Egyptian papyri that Joseph Smith translated beginning in 1835. Many people saw the papyri, but no eyewitness account of the translation survives, making it impossible to reconstruct the process. (This is not exactly true, but is added to avoid addressing the issues with the translation that we will see later. Footnote 31 refers to an 1838 letter in the Painesville Republican in which Joseph Smith’s secretary Warren Parrish wrote: “I have set (sic) by his side and penned down the Egyptian hieroglyphicks (sic) as he claimed to receive it by direct inspiration from heaven.” Remember this point later when the essay suggests that Joseph might have received the Book of Abraham entirely as a revelation without even reading the characters. Parrish makes it clear that the process involved the characters on the papyrus, as did a number of statements in Joseph’s own journal. More about footnote 31 when we get there. Williams W. Phelps and Oliver Cowdery were also witnesses to the details of the translation process.) ​ Only small fragments of the long papyrus scrolls once in Joseph Smith’s possession exist today. The relationship between those fragments and the text we have today is largely a matter of conjecture. (This is hardly a matter of conjecture, considering that we have the actual character- by-character translation in the Kirtland Egyptian Papers. Also, as we shall see, there is no evidence that the “long papyrus scrolls” mentioned here ever existed. This is an apologetic rationale created to sow the seeds of doubt that the real papyrus was ever actually found.) ​ We do know some things about the translation process. The word translation typically assumes an expert knowledge of multiple languages. Joseph Smith claimed no expertise in any language. This is simply not true. In fact, there are a number of examples of Joseph bragging about his ability to speak and understand many languages, including Egyptian. Here’s one example: “Were I a Chaldean I would exclaim, Keed'nauh to-me-roon lehoam elauhayauh dey - ahemayana veh aur'hau lau gnaubadoo, yabadoo ma-ar'gnau comeen tehoat sheamyauh allah (Thus shall ye say unto them: The gods that have not made the heaven and the earth, they shall perish from the earth, and from these heavens.) An Egyptian, Su-e-eh-ni (What other persons are those?) A Grecian, Diabolos basileuei (The Devil reigns.) A Frenchman, Messieurs sans Dieu (Gentlemen without God.) . . .”(The Voice of Truth published by Joseph Smith in Nauvoo, 1844) Joseph goes on, quoting phrases of Turkish, German, Syrian, Spanish, Italian, Hebrew, Danish, Latin, and other languages. And here’s another example: “Were I an Egyptian, I would exclaim Jah-oh-eh, Enish-go-on-dosh, Flo-ees-Flos-is-is; [O the earth! the power of attraction, and the moon passing between her and the sun.]” (Times and Seasons, November 13, 1843, Joseph Smith, editor) And yet another: “I have now preached a little Latin, a little Hebrew, Greek, and German; and I have fulfilled all. I am not so big a fool as many have taken me to be. The Germans know that I read the German correctly.” (Joseph Smith, King Follett Discourse) The “Egyptian” words Joseph uses here are from his own Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar, which he created in the process of translating the Book of Abraham. The problem is that these words are not Egyptian at all, they are nonsensical words invented by Joseph Smith. Whether or not Joseph thought they actually meant something is impossible to determine, but the essay author’s insistence that Joseph claimed no knowledge of ancient languages is patently false. He may not have actually known any other languages but he liked to pretend that he did and he went to great lengths to convince other people that he really could read ancient languages. This backfired on him a couple of times when he claimed the ability to read ancient documents that turned out to be intentional hoaxes. (Look up the Kinderhook Plates and the Greek Psalter for other examples where he claimed to translate items that turned out to be hoaxes.) Some might argue that Joseph Smith was simply being prideful and thus boasted beyond his actual abilities, but the stories fix exactly in line with discovering the Book of Abraham with purchased mummies. More to the point here, the authors are setting the stage to start surrendering any notion you might have had about the meaning of the word “translate.” Additionally, Joseph made specific claims that he WAS capable of reading the Egyptian characters on the papyri. Of the translation period he said “I was continually engaged in translating an alphabet of the Book of Abraham, and arranging a grammar of the Egyptian language as practiced by the ancients (History of the Church, 2:238). The document that Joseph called a “grammar” is actually a dictionary in which he displayed characters from the papyrus alongside his translation of them, one of the four copies of this document is almost entirely in Joseph’s own handwriting..

​ Example of character translations in the Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language He readily acknowledged that he was one of the “weak things of the world,” called to speak words sent “from heaven.”1 Speaking of the translation of the Book of Mormon, the Lord said, “You cannot write that which is sacred save it be given you from me.”2 The same principle can be applied to the book of Abraham. The Lord did not require Joseph Smith to have knowledge of Egyptian. By the gift and power of God, Joseph received knowledge about the life and teachings of Abraham. Whether or not the Lord required it, Joseph did actually claim to fully understand Egyptian hieroglyphic writing. Joseph said he knew the contents of the scrolls upon seeing them because of his “translation of some of the characters of hieroglyphs” (History of the Church 2:296) Additionally, Joseph provided a detailed description of the mechanics of Egyptian writing (although he has since been proven to be entirely incorrect) to demonstrate his thorough understanding of the language. It is very disingenuous for this essay to attempt to convince us that Joseph made no claims of being able to translate other languages, which is vital to try and explain the glaring errors we will soon see. On many particulars, the book of Abraham is consistent with historical knowledge about the ancient world.3 Some of this knowledge, which is discussed later in this essay, had not yet been discovered or was not well known in 1842 (Although the author does not give us any examples that do not come from sources that were readily available to Joseph except, as we will see, the single word Olishem). But even this evidence of ancient origins, substantial though it may be (There is zero basis for using the word "substantial” here beyond setting the stage to redefine what the Book of Abraham is and how it came to be), cannot prove the truthfulness of the book of Abraham any more than archaeological evidence can prove the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt or the Resurrection of the Son of God. (In other words the archaeological evidence does not side with the Book of Abraham any more than it does for the exodus, which the archaeological evidence suggests never happened. This is an example of a common LDS apologetic practice of throwing other Judeo-Christian beliefs under the bus in order to make their own problems seem not so bad) The book of Abraham’s status as scripture ultimately rests on faith in the saving truths found within the book itself as witnessed by the Holy Ghost. This introduction is set up to prepare you for what is to come. You will learn that the Book of Abraham is not what you have been taught it is, and you will be asked to abandon any attempts at researching the facts, but to instead focus on receiving a spiritual confirmation instead. We will discuss later in the essay why this is a problematic approach, but it is important to note early on that even the author of this essay know that the Book of Abraham is a massive problem for the authenticity of the church. The Book of Abraham as Scripture (This section has no bearing on whether or not the Book of Abraham is an authentic translation. It is simply an overview of the contents of the book to distract you from the problems that this essay was created to address.) ​ Thousands of years ago, the prophet Nephi learned that one purpose of the Book of Mormon was to “establish the truth” of the Bible.4 In a similar way, the book of Abraham supports, expands, and clarifies the biblical account of Abraham’s life. ​ In the biblical account, God covenants with Abraham to “make of thee a great nation.”5 The book of Abraham provides context for that covenant by showing that Abraham was a seeker of “great knowledge” and a “follower of righteousness” who chose the right path in spite of great hardship. He rejected the wickedness of his father’s household and spurned the idols of the surrounding culture, despite the threat of death.6 ​ In the Bible, God’s covenant with Abraham appears to begin during Abraham’s life. According to the book of Abraham, the covenant began before the foundation of the earth and was passed down through Adam, Noah, and other prophets.7 Abraham thus takes his place in a long line of prophets and patriarchs whose mission is to preserve and extend God’s covenant on earth. The heart of this covenant is the priesthood, through which “the blessings of salvation, even of life eternal” are conveyed.8 ​ The book of Abraham clarifies several teachings that are obscure in the Bible. (The Book of Abraham actually has a lot of teachings that help align the church to Joseph Smith's teachings. The Book of Mormon itself does not address almost any of the major doctrines of Mormonism that we know today) Life did not begin at birth, as is commonly believed. Prior to coming to earth, individuals existed as spirits. In a vision, Abraham saw that one of the spirits was “like unto God.”9 This divine being, Jesus Christ, led other spirits in organizing the earth out of “materials” or preexisting matter, not ex nihilo or out of nothing, as many Christians later came to believe.10 Abraham further learned that mortal life was crucial to the plan of happiness God would provide for His children: “We will prove them herewith,” God stated, “to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them,” adding a promise to add glory forever upon the faithful.11 Nowhere in the Bible is the purpose and potential of earth life stated so clearly as in the book of Abraham. (It is also worth noting that the Book of Abraham was integral in the ban on black members of the church from the priesthood and temple through the following scriptures: Abraham 1:24 - When this woman discovered the land it was under water, who afterward settled her sons in it; and thus, from Ham, sprang that race which preserved the curse in the land. ​ Abraham 1:27 - Now, Pharaoh being of that lineage by which he could not have the right of Priesthood, notwithstanding the Pharaohs would fain claim it from Noah, through Ham, therefore my father was led away by their idolatry.) Origin of the Book of Abraham The powerful truths found in the book of Abraham emerged from a set of unique historical events. In the summer of 1835, an entrepreneur named Michael Chandler arrived at Church headquarters in Kirtland, Ohio, with four mummies and multiple scrolls of papyrus.12 Chandler found a ready audience. Due partly to the exploits of the French emperor Napoleon, the antiquities unearthed in the catacombs of Egypt had created a fascination across the Western world.13 Chandler capitalized on this interest by touring with ancient Egyptian artifacts and charging visitors a fee to see them. ​ These artifacts had been uncovered by Antonio Lebolo, a former cavalryman in the Italian army. Lebolo, who oversaw some of the excavations for the consul general of France, pulled 11 mummies from a tomb not far from the ancient city of Thebes. Lebolo shipped the artifacts to Italy, and after his death, they ended up in New York. At some point the mummies and scrolls came into Chandler’s possession.14 ​ By the time the collection arrived in Kirtland, all but four mummies and several papyrus scrolls had already been sold. A group of Latter-day Saints in Kirtland purchased the remaining artifacts for the Church. After Joseph Smith examined the papyri and commenced “the translation of some of the characters or hieroglyphics,” his history recounts, “much to our joy [we] found that one of the rolls contained the writings of Abraham.”15 Specifically, Joseph Smith identified two particular scrolls as the book of the patriarch Abraham and the book of Joseph, who was sold into Egypt. They actually turned out to be the funerary scrolls of a man named Hor and a woman named Ta-shert-min, plus fragments from the document of a third person, which Joseph also mistook for part of the Book of Abraham. There is no longer any dispute about this among scholars, either LDS or non-LDS, as will be confirmed in this essay. We now know a great deal about the owner of the Abraham scroll and its real purpose. The scroll from which the Book of Abraham was translated is now known as PJS 1, or the Hor Book of Breathings. It was entombed with its owner, Horos (also Hor or Horus), a Thebian Priest of a god named Min Who Massacres His Enemies. This is the same Min who appears in Facsimile 2 and is identified by Joseph Smith as “God sitting upon his throne.” An interesting aspect of Min is that is that he is depicted with an erect penis. When the church realized this they erased the penis from the facsimile, but eventually restored it in later printing. Hors’ father Osoroeris was also a priest of Min and his mother Chibois was a temple musician. Egyptologists know enough about Hor that they have reconstructed his family tree. We know who his grandparents were as well as his parents, siblings and descendents... eight generations in all. We know the very room where Hor’s mummy was found, its location and dimensions, and we can date his burial to the late 1st century or early 2nd century B.C. Hor’s Book of Breathings dates to the first half of the 2nd Century BC, approximately 2000 years after Abraham. Hor was actually buried with two versions of the Book of the Dead. The scrolls were separated after the discovery of the tomb; one scroll ended up in Joseph Smith’s hands and the other was found in the Louvre’s collection. Because of the similarities of the two scrolls we are able to compare them and ascertain what was on the missing portion of Joseph’s scroll. Many church apologists claim that the missing portion could have contained the actual Book of Abraham. It did not. It contained more funerary texts and the illustration that we now call Facsimile 3. (Robert K. Ritner, The Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri: A Complete Edition) Translation and the Book of Abraham Joseph Smith worked on the translation of the book of Abraham during the summer and fall of 1835, by which time he completed at least the first chapter and part of the second chapter.16 His journal next speaks of translating the papyri in the spring of 1842, after the Saints had relocated to Nauvoo, Illinois. All five chapters of the book of Abraham, along with three illustrations (now known as facsimiles 1, 2, and 3), were published in the Times and Seasons, the Church’s newspaper in Nauvoo, between March and May 1842.17 Before we get into the translation of the Abraham narrative itself, let’s take a quick look at one of these Facsimiles, just to get a general idea of the accuracy of Joseph’s ability to translate Egyptian. Below is Facsimile 3, which occupied the portion of the Hor scroll that is now missing. Joseph numbered the figures in this illustration and gave us translations and explanations for each. Beneath the illustration I have listed Joseph’s interpretation alongside the actual translation, as universally agreed upon by Egyptologists, including LDS scholars:

​ Joseph Smith Egyptologists Fig. 1 Abraham upon Pharaoh's throne (X) The god Osiris (!) Fig. 2 King Pharaoh (male) (X) Isis, the God’s mother (female) (!) Fig. 3 Abraham in Egypt (his actual signature) (X) A libation table (with wine, etc) (!) Fig. 4 Prince of Pharaoh, King of Egypt (male) (X) Maat, mistress of the gods (female) (!) Fig. 5 Shulem, one of the king’s waiters (X) Hor, the owner of this scroll (!) Fig. 6 Olma, a slave (X) Anubis, god of the underworld (!) (!) = correct and peer reviewed, (X) = totally missed the mark Just about anyone in our day, being a bit more familiar with Egyptian symbolism, can tell which of these figures are male and which are female, but Joseph got even that wrong (unless you accept Mormon apologist John Gee’s dubious possibility that the female characters in the image were really men dressed in drag). Another problem is that Joseph identified Fig. 3 as the actual signature of Abraham, which is very problematic considering that this papyrus has been dated to 2000 years after Abraham, even more so when you consider that Fig. 3 is nothing like a signature, but is actually a depiction of a libations table for ceremonial wine and food. Another telling detail is that Joseph misidentified an Egyptian god as a slave simply because he appears to have black skin, and he had the printmaker remove Anubis’ jackal snout to make the image better fit his interpretation, something that is apparent when you examine the printer’s plates. Joseph correctly deduced that the names of the characters are written in the columns above their heads, yet he entirely failed in his claims of translating those names. This level of inaccuracy is repeated in the other two facsimiles as well. It should also be noted that Facsimile 2 is totally unrelated to the other two and comes from a completely different document, made at a different time and for a different person, someone named Sheshonk. Yet Joseph identifies all of them as the Book of Abraham. Facsimile 2 is actually a hypocephalus, an extract from the Book of the Dead that serves as magical document that is placed under the head of a mummy to help guide him or her through the underworld. ​

Above is a reproduction of Facsimile 2 indicating some of the missing portions of the papyrus that were reconstructed by Joseph Smith. Joseph simply borrowed hieratic characters (an older form of Egyptian writing than what appears in the rest of the document) from another papyrus, the Hor Book of Breathings, and mixed them randomly and without any apparently strategy among the demotic characters on the hypocephalus, sometimes even copying the characters upside down, demonstrating a lack of understanding of what they said while then attempting to provide translations of them. Incidentally, demotic script did not appear until about 1500 years after Abraham. So, besides the Book of Abraham text, Joseph produced translations of many other Egyptian characters from the facsimiles that are now reproduced in the Pearl of Great Price, and in the case of these restored characters, he translated the same characters in two places with entirely different meanings. Unfortunately, none of these “translations” even remotely resemble what the characters actually say. These discrepancies cannot be written off as “inspiration,” rather than translation because Joseph provided us with a direct one-to-one correlation to the actual characters in the facsimiles. For example, Joseph said that figure 5 of Facsimile 2 “ "Is called in Egyptian Enish-go-on-dosh; this is one of the governing planets also, and is said by the Egyptians to be the Sun, and to borrow its light from Kolob through the medium of Kae-e-vanrash, which is the grand Key, ... receiving light from the revolutions of Kolob," but those characters actually say, “the cow of Hathor, behind which stands a uzat-headed goddess holding a sacred tree." Figure 8, according to Joseph, "Contains writings that cannot be revealed unto the world; but is to be had in the Holy Temple of God." The actual translation is "grant that the soul of Osiris Sheshonk may live." The book of Abraham was the last of Joseph Smith’s translation efforts. In these inspired translations, Joseph Smith did not claim to know the ancient languages of the records he was translating. (As we noted earlier, he liked to use made up “Egyptian” words in public that he claimed were real Egyptian). Much like the Book of Mormon, Joseph’s translation of the book of Abraham was recorded in the language of the King James Bible. This was the idiom of scripture familiar to early Latter-day Saints, and its use was consistent with the Lord’s pattern of revealing His truths “after the manner of their [His servants’] language, that they might come to understanding.”18 (This is speculation designed to cover serious issues in Joseph Smith's translation efforts as a whole (the Deutero-Isaiah issues in the Book of Mormon are due to using the King James Bible to directly copy scripture from, even though those particular verses could not have been available when the gold plates were supposedly engraved. All of Joseph’s scripture and revelation was in King James English, probably because he was familiar with it, and writing books in King James English was something of a fad at the time of Joseph Smith. It was designed to make them seem more authoritative, some of these other books bear a strong resemblance to Joseph’s scripture (See The Later War by Gilbert J. Hunt and The First Book of Napoleon by Michael Linning). ​ Joseph’s translations took a variety of forms. Some of his translations, like that of the Book of Mormon, utilized ancient documents in his possession. (This is again church narrative that has been forced to change lately. Please refer to the Book of Mormon Translation essay, where we learn that Joseph didn’t actually use the gold plates to translate the Book of Mormon after all. Instead, he peered at a 'seer stone' in a hat that was pressed tightly against his face) Other times, his translations were not based on any known physical records. Joseph’s translation of portions of the Bible, for example, included restoration of original text, harmonization of contradictions within the Bible itself, and inspired commentary.19 (It needs be noted that a recent BYU study found that this translation of the Bible was heavily plagiarized from Adam Clarke's biblical studies. It is also telling that his largest addition in his Bible translation was to write a prophecy about himself into the Bible. (JST, Genesis 50:24–38). But all of this is beside the point because Joseph clearly and repeatedly claimed that he translated the Book of Abraham from the papyrus, which is claimed to have been written by the hand of Abraham.) Some evidence suggests that Joseph studied the characters on the Egyptian papyri and attempted to learn the Egyptian language. His history reports that, in July 1835, he was “continually engaged in translating an alphabet to the Book of Abraham, and arranging a grammar of the Egyptian language as practiced by the ancients.”20 This “grammar,” as it was called, consisted of columns of hieroglyphic characters followed by English translations recorded in a large notebook by Joseph’s scribe, William W. Phelps. Another manuscript, written by Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery, has Egyptian characters followed by explanations.21 The relationship of these documents to the book of Abraham is not fully understood. (“Not fully understood” only to the degree that you are unwilling to accept that they are proclaimed by Joseph to indeed be the a step in his literal translation of the Book of Abraham from the Hor papyrus) Neither the rules nor the translations in the grammar book correspond to those recognized by Egyptologists today (Exactly! The translations are completely wrong when compared to actual Egyptian translation. Joseph created them before Champollion’s decipherment Egyptian was generally recognized, and have been proven to be a completely fraudulent translation). Whatever the role of the grammar book, it appears that Joseph Smith began translating portions of the book of Abraham almost immediately after the purchase of the papyri.22 Phelps apparently viewed Joseph Smith as uniquely capable of understanding the Egyptian characters: “As no one could translate these writings,” he told his wife, “they were presented to President Smith. He soon knew what they were.”23 (In other words, Joseph did claim that this was the actual writing of Abraham and that he COULD read it.) Here are a few random examples of words from Joseph’s GAEL (Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language) of characters from the Hor Book of Breathings (Abraham papyrus): Zub zool - The first born Zi oop hah - A young virgin Hoe oop hah phat heh - Patriarchal government Zab zoal - From the beginning Phah ho e oop - A king who has universal dominion Zip zi - Women Tish Zi hoe oop sater: The glory of the Celestial Kingdom (josephsmithpapers.org - Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language, circa July–circa December 1835) None of these words, or any others in Joseph’s Alphabet and Grammar or that he used in speeches, bear any resemblance to the actual Egyptian language to which they pretend. They are completely made up, and with them being the only source that we have to confirm Joseph Smith's abilities, are a major problem for the credibility of the church. ​ The Papyri After the Latter-day Saints left Nauvoo, the Egyptian artifacts remained behind. Joseph Smith’s family sold the papyri and the mummies in 1856. (One odd question is if these scrolls were truly authentic proof that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God, why did the family sell the scrolls?) The papyri were divided up and sold to various parties; historians believe that most were destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 (Fortunately the Book of Abraham and the Book of Joseph scrolls were among the papyri that survived). Ten papyrus fragments once in Joseph Smith’s possession ended up in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.24 In 1967, the museum transferred these fragments to the Church, which subsequently published them in the Church’s magazine, the Improvement Era.25 The Era magazine blocked out space for a series of monthly articles for the much-anticipated translation which would prove Joseph Smith’s prophetic stature once and for all. BYU professor Hugh Nibley was chosen to perform the translation (even though some Egyptologists had already done so), but it never appeared in the magazine. Rather than providing the translation, Nibley proceeded to write a series of general articles about Abraham. Why would this be the case if Nibley believed that Joseph Smith had been proven authentic? Nibley admitted. “It is doubtful whether any translation could do as much good as harm.” (Dr. Hugh Nibley, BYU Studies, Spring 1968, p. 251) ​ The discovery of the papyrus fragments renewed debate about Joseph Smith’s translation. The fragments included one vignette, or illustration, that appears in the book of Abraham as facsimile 1. Long before the fragments were published by the Church, some Egyptologists had said that Joseph Smith’s explanations of the various elements of these facsimiles did not match their own interpretations of these drawings (While the essay uses the word some to leave room for members to ignore the evidence, in fact all Egyptologists, LDS and non-LDS alike, agree on this point). Joseph Smith had published the facsimiles as freestanding drawings, cut off from the hieroglyphs or hieratic characters that originally surrounded the vignettes. The discovery of the fragments meant that readers could now see the hieroglyphs and characters immediately surrounding the vignette that became facsimile 1.26 None of the characters on the papyrus fragments mentioned Abraham’s name or any of the events recorded in the book of Abraham. Mormon and non-Mormon Egyptologists agree that the characters on the fragments do not match the translation given in the book of Abraham, though there is not unanimity, even among non-Mormon scholars, about the proper interpretation of the vignettes on these fragments.27 (This is an intentionally misleading statement to give the impression that there is no consensus about these papyri. There are slight variations between the translations by various scholars, as would be the case with any translated document, but there is absolutely no confusion about what they are and what they say. Scholars have unanimously identified the papyrus fragments as parts of standard funerary texts that were deposited with mummified bodies from sometime between the third Century BC. and the first Century AD, long, long after Abraham. There are no scholars that believe Joseph Smith's translations are correct on any level, no matter how many ways the essay tries to leave wiggle room.) Of course, the fragments do not have to be as old as Abraham for the book of Abraham and its illustrations to be authentic (The essay is now redefining the meanings of both “translation” and “authentic”). Ancient records are often transmitted as copies or as copies of copies. The record of Abraham could have been edited or redacted by later writers much as the Book of Mormon prophet-historians Mormon and Moroni revised the writings of earlier peoples.28 (Except that the canonized Book of Abraham itself proclaims that it was written by Abraham's own hand upon Papyrus, and Joseph identified one set of characters as the actual signature of Abraham. But the bigger problem is that these papyri have NOTHING to do with Abraham. They are common pagan prayers and embalming instructions. Do the authors of this essay really expect you to believe that they changed from Abraham’s original text to Egyptian ceremonies merely due to bad reproductions over the years? These documents were very important rituals that were central to the Egyptian religion, and it is impossible to believe the meaning could be changed so much that it would turn the scrolls from a story about Abraham to funerary texts.) Moreover, documents initially composed for one context can be repackaged for another context or purpose.29 Illustrations once connected with Abraham could have either drifted or been dislodged from their original context and reinterpreted hundreds of years later in terms of burial practices in a later period of Egyptian history. The opposite could also be true: illustrations with no clear connection to Abraham anciently could, by revelation, shed light on the life and teachings of this prophetic figure. (Apologists here are literally throwing every possibility at the wall and hoping that something sticks. Occam's razor would tell us that the solution that requires the least amount of assumptions is the correct one, and in this case the only conclusion is that the translation is not from God and not correct.) ​ Let’s stop here for a moment after the last few paragraphs. We must remember that this essay has been approved by the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve. Shouldn’t they, working with the church’s best scholars, have some actual answers for us? How many “could have”s and “the opposite could be true”s and “alternatively”s should we expect from an essay that was created by the church specifically to provide answers to these questions? ​ Some have assumed that the hieroglyphs adjacent to and surrounding facsimile 1 must be a source for the text of the book of Abraham. But this claim rests on the assumption that a vignette and its adjacent text must be associated in meaning. In fact, it was not uncommon for ancient Egyptian vignettes to be placed some distance from their associated commentary.30 (But that is neither here nor there. The Kirtland Egyptian Papers, for which Joseph took credit, which bear his handwriting, and which this essay admitted previously were made with his participation and direction, make it clear that these characters ARE the source of the Book of Abraham. We have translation manuscripts that prove this, which will be shown below.) Neither the Lord nor Joseph Smith explained the process of translation of the book of Abraham, but some insight can be gained from the Lord’s instructions to Joseph regarding translation. In April 1829, Joseph received a revelation for Oliver Cowdery that taught that both intellectual work and revelation were essential to translating sacred records. It was necessary to “study it out in your mind” and then seek spiritual confirmation. (It is strongly recommended to read the the original revelation and the Book of Commandments version of this scripture and then compare them with the modified version that we find in the current D&C to see how radically these words of God were changed over time to fit Joseph Smith's teachings (Revelation Book 1 April 1829-B, BoC 7, D&C 8). Records indicate that Joseph and others studied the papyri and that close observers also believed that the translation came by revelation. As John Whitmer observed, “Joseph the Seer saw these Record[s] and by the revelation of Jesus Christ could translate these records.”31 (With this footnote the authors have given us a textbook example of cherry-picking the evidence to intentionally present a story that is different from what the source material actually says. It also references a letter written by Warren Parrish, the former secretary of Joseph Smith who fell out of favor because of what he considered improper financial dealings by the prophet, in which Parrish says “he claimed to receive it by direct inspiration of Heaven.” But in this letter Parrish was actually presenting evidence that Joseph was using things like the Book of Abraham and his doomed bank to take advantage of people. In regards to Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon he says, “their lives have been one continued scene of lying, deception and fraud, and that too, in the name of God.” (Warren Parrish, letter to the editor, Painesville Republican, Feb. 15, 1838). The authors of the essay assume most members will not read the source material, but in this case members that do will find a very different meaning than what they have proclaimed.) It is likely futile to assess Joseph’s ability to translate papyri when we now have only a fraction of the papyri he had in his possession. Eyewitnesses spoke of “a long roll” or multiple “rolls” of papyrus.32 Since only fragments survive, it is likely that much of the papyri accessible to Joseph when he translated the book of Abraham is not among these fragments. The loss of a significant portion of the papyri means the relationship of the papyri to the published text cannot be settled conclusively by reference to the papyri. ​ This is another very dishonest attempt to convince us that the existing papyrus is not the actual source of the Book of Abraham. Again, we need only look at the notebook that Joseph and his scribes created while he was translating to see the obvious connection. We can clearly see the translation laid out systematically, character-by-character, using characters directly from the Hor scroll:

Some apologists try to explain this away as an attempt by Joseph’s scribes to reverse-engineer Joseph’s translation, a claim that is entirely unsupportable considering that: a) four pages of the notebooks are in Joseph’s own handwriting, b) Joseph repeatedly took credit for this work in his journal. (History of the Church, Vol. 2: 238, 286, 316), c) Joseph repeatedly used words from this Alphabet and Grammar in his writings and speeches as examples of legitimate Egyptian, as we have already seen, and most significantly, d) analysis of journal entry dates reveals that the Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar was written before the translation of the majority of the Book of Abraham text (Vogel, Egyptian Alphabets & Princess Katumin). Besides, we only need to look at the translations of the characters in the facsimiles to know that Joseph was indeed translating from these papyri. The long scroll theory is pure myth. By measuring the spacing between a damaged portions of the scroll, which repeat rhythmically along the length of the scroll because it was rolled up at the time the damage occurred, the exact length of the scroll has been accurately calculated. It turns out that only about 56 centimeters of the papyrus is missing. There would have been no room for the Book of Abraham text on the missing portion. (Andrew W. Cook and Christopher C. Smith, The Original Length of the Scroll of Hor, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought) By comparing the Hor scroll to other Books of Breathing such as the companion Hor scroll that ended up in the Louvre, we know that space was occupied not by text but by the now-missing Facsimile 3 drawing. Claims that the Book of Abraham actually came from a different, longer scroll are invalidated by the fact that the Book of Abraham itself clearly states that Facsimile 1 is part of the same scroll. Abraham says, “and that you may have a knowledge of this altar, I will refer you to the representation at the commencement of this record” (Abraham 1:12). The author of the essay mentions “eyewitnesses” of a long scroll but this entire fable comes from a single third-person, third-generation account by Hugh Nibley concerning something that his uncle claimed to have heard from Joseph Smith’s nephew George A. Smith many decades earlier. Smith is rumored to have claimed by Nibley, via his uncle, that he saw a long scroll in the Nauvoo Mansion when he was five years old. Nibley’s uncle heard the story recounted by Smith 63 years after the fact. So this is a retelling of a retelling of a retelling of a 63-year old childhood memory by a man who is a well established teller of tall tales. It is hard to imagine a less reliable source. Additionally, a long scroll makes no sense because these scrolls had to be small enough to be gripped by the mummy’s hand to be accessible to him in the afterlife. A longer scroll would have defeated its own purpose and would have defied the well-attested fact that these scrolls actually came from the mummy’s hands. Even though his name is referenced eight times in the endnotes of this essay, Dr. Nibley’s interpretations should be taken with a grain of salt, considering that his statements about the Book of Abraham have been dismissed by the church’s First Presidency. You have to wonder why the current First Presidency allowed them to occupy such a significant role in this essay.) But all of this hoopla about the length of the scroll doesn’t really matter in the end. The Facsimiles alone are enough to tell us that these papyri have nothing to do with the Book of Abraham. Just as mentioned above, Occam's Razor tells us that the simple answer is going to be correct, and in this case again the simple answer is that the papyri do not match what Joseph Smith proclaimed them to say. ​ Let’s take a brief look at Facsimile 1, which the text of the Book of Abraham claims is a picture of Abraham upon the altar about to be sacrificed by an idolatrous priest:

On the left we see a photographic image of the actual papyrus overlayed on the drawing that is reproduced in the Pearl of Great Price. The image on the right is a reconstruction of what the original papyrus would have actually looked like, according to Egyptologists.

Notice that the actual papyrus has pieces missing. Joseph Smith filled in these holes with his own drawings to restore what he thought the original image might have looked like. It turns out that this is a very well known Egyptian funerary image and there are many examples of it still in existence. Just like with the translations, Joseph got these wrong as well. Notice that the only differences between the two versions (blue boxes) are in the missing portions that Joseph filled in from his imagination/inspiration. One interesting mistake Joseph made was in failing to realize that some of the lines to the right of the center box are wing feathers, because the rest of the bird was missing from his scroll. He turned them into the fingers of a second arm of the struggling Abraham. There are many more problematic issues with this facsimile reconstruction, but this gives a general idea. Some claim that this couldn’t be an embalming scene because the characters’ legs are not bound together but, again, there are many examples of this pose in existing Egyptian embalming scenes. Here is another example of this scene from a different scroll. Notice the position of the legs of the person being embalmed (E. A. Wallis Budge, Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection):