Translation and Historicity of the Book of Abraham (official church essay)

“Of some ancient Records that have fallen into our hands, from the Catecombs of Egypt, purporting to be the writings of Abraham, while he was in Egypt, called the BOOK OF ABRAHAM, written by his own hand, upon papyrus.” – Millenial Star July 1842, Original Introduction to 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.” – (Translation and Historicity of the Book of Abraham)

“Only small fragments of the long papyrus scrolls once in Joseph Smith’s possession exist today.”

The church announced in 1968 that it had in its possession 12 segments of the papyri that Joseph used to translate the Book of Abraham. 11 were identified at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and one turned out to have been in the church’s collection all along (see Gee, John. New Light on the Joseph Smith Papyri, 2007 and The Improvement Era Feb 1968). Why the piece that was in the church’s possession had never been ‘found’ until the other 11 showed up is a bit of a mystery. Prior to that point, the church had always taught that all of the the papyrus were destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Somehow I was still taught this in a religion course at BYU in 2000, 32 years after the papyri were firmly in the church’s possession.

See two examples of the papyrus below. They are not ‘mere fragments’, they have quite a bit of writing, including the actual facsimiles that exist today in the Pearl of Great Price. You can see all 11 on Wikipedia here.

“The relationship between those fragments and the text we have today is largely a matter of conjecture.”

This is not very honest. Michael D. Rhodes, researcher of ancient scripture at BYU, was tasked with defending the authenticity of the Book of Abraham. In the July 1988 Ensign, he answered very directly that these papyri are “clearly part of Joseph Smith’s original collection.” This isn’t even a point of dispute by the church, but the wording in the essay makes it seem like we’re not sure if these really are the right papyri.

“The word translation typically assumes an expert knowledge of multiple languages. Joseph Smith claimed no expertise in any language.”

Joseph constantly claimed expertise in all sorts of languages – that was a central claim for him being a prophet, seer and revelator. As one example:

“I have an old edition of the New Testament in the Latin, Hebrew, German and Greek languages. I have been reading the German, and find it to be the most [nearly] correct translation, and to correspond nearest to the revelations which God has given to me for the last fourteen years.” (King Follett Sermon, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, pg. 349)

Here’s another, from the same sermon:

“I shall comment on the very first Hebrew word in the Bible; I will make a comment on the very first sentence of the history of creation in the Bible—Berosheit. I want to analyze the word. Baith—in, by, through, and everything else. Rosh—the head, Sheit—grammatical termination.”(ibid.)

Of Joseph’s ability to translate, Orson Pratt once commented:

“In these inspired translations, Joseph Smith did not claim to know the ancient languages of the records he was translating… 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. Other times, his translations were not based on any known physical records.

“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 arrangeing a grammar of the Egyptian language as practiced by the ancients.’ 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. The relationship of these documents to the book of Abraham is not fully understood.”

The essay is trying hard to show that Joseph’s efforts at translation don’t fit the modern definition of translation, but were actually more like inspiration that comes from the spirit. This version of translation would not require anything that he translates to match what is written down, because the source was actually the spirit, not the original document. This is problematic, because this is not how Joseph viewed his efforts. The essay itself explains that Joseph and Oliver Cowdery created a grammar utilizing the hieroglyphics in the text. Here is what that looks like, in their own handwriting, which the church has always had in its possession (available here), but which was not made public until some critics of the church obtained and published a copy of them.



“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.”

There is definitely dispute about whether or not we have some, most or all of the papyri. But does that really matter so much, if the parts we do have can be compared to Joseph’s own original manuscript, with matching hieroglyphics, and can be definitively shown to be completely unrelated to what is actually on the document?

“According to this view, Joseph’s translation was not a literal rendering of the papyri as a conventional translation would be. Rather, the physical artifacts provided an occasion for meditation, reflection, and revelation.”

Again the essay wants to say that it doesn’t need to be a translation, it could have just been inspiration. Unfortunately, the introduction to the Book of Abraham as printed in the Millenial Star in 1842 stated that the papyrus were written by Abraham himself:

“Of some ancient Records that have fallen into our hands, from the Catecombs of Egypt, purporting to be the writings of Abraham, while he was in Egypt, called the BOOK OF ABRAHAM, written by his own hand, upon papyrus.” – Original Introduction to the Book of Abraham

This introduction has been cleaned up since 1842, but still claims it to be “The writings of Abraham while he was in Egypt, called the Book of Abraham, written by his own hand, upon papyrus.” The Book of Abraham, LDS.org

The idea that the Book of Abraham was written by the great patriarch himself is also very problematic now that we have the original papyrus, since they are dated to somewhere between 100 BC and 100 AD, and Abraham is believed to have lived somewhere around 2000 BC. (The Book of Abraham, The Pearl of Great Price Study Manual, 2000, 28-41)

Why does it matter?

After poking around on LDS.org and looking into the history of the papyrus, it becomes clear that the church has known for a long time that the Book of Abraham as a literal translation is just not possible, although this was never taught to me in Sunday school, seminary, institute or religion courses at BYU. For those that do somehow hear about this fact and go looking for official church explanation, the efforts since 1968, and repeated in the new essay, have tried to create an alternative narrative that explains the book as inspired, rather than directly translated.

Why does this matter to me so much? Two reasons.

First, The Book of Abraham is canonized scripture, containing important doctrine that is not found elsewhere in our scriptures. If it is not a translated work, as Joseph himself claimed, then what is it? And should we still accept as doctrine the information that is found there?

Some of the doctrines unique to the Book of Abraham:

God resides near the star Kolob (Chapter 3)

Explanation that “Abraham’s seed” are not just his literal progeny, but also those that hold the priesthood (2:11)

A scriptural foundation for the idea of eternity of intelligences as Joseph Smith taught about them in the King Follett discourse (3:18)

Scriptural foundation for the idea that God is also an intelligence (3:19)

The idea of first and second estates (3:26)

The idea that there were many “noble and great ones” that God chose as rulers in the pre-earth life (3:23)

The scriptural basis for “organizing” rather than creating (Chapter 4)

Scriptural basis for the idea that Jehovah and the “Gods” together organized the earth (4:1)

Second, as a member of the church I have always been taught that the process of translating the Book of Mormon was the same as the process for translating the Book of Abraham. An original historical document, in the form of the golden plates, was given to Joseph. He literally translated the plates, character for character, and the result was the Book of Mormon. We have the famous Anton Transcript, where Joseph reproduced hieroglyphics of reformed Egyptian from the plates.

Martin Harris took this transcript to Charles Anton at Columbia University to see if he could translate them the way that Joseph did. He could not, and his response that “I cannot read a sealed book” is often cited as a fulfillment of the prophecy found in Isaiah 29:11-12 (and repeated in 2 Nephi 27: 15-18), to provide further evidence that the Book of Mormon is an actual historical record.

We do not have the golden plates now to verify Joseph’s translation, but we do have the original papyri for the Book of Abraham, and we can see that it definitively is NOT a translation. What does this say for the likelihood that Joseph did translate the golden plates?