The Book of Abraham
I was recently befriended by an elder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS), and to my absolute joy, our conversations have been the most cordial and friendly of any I have had with an LDS member (You will probably know this church as the “Mormon” church, but it seems that many LDS are moving away from that term, so I am using LDS as to avoid unnecessarily offending anyone).
In our last conversation, having previously established my love for theology and apologetics, my friend asked if in my studies I had engaged any with the Book of Mormon. I replied that I had perused the book, but the bulk of my studies into LDS literature had revolved mainly around the Book of Abraham -a section within The Pearl of Great Price, and Joseph Smith’s King Follett Discourse. He confessed that he hadn’t done much study in the Book of Abraham and asked what my thoughts on it were. I replied saying that I found many things about the book problematic, and having awakened his curiosity, he asked what those problems were. I proceeded to give him a few of my findings, taking care to keep my answer at an appropriate length for Facebook messenger. In this article, I intend to go much deeper into the subject.
The significance of the Book of Abraham
When Joseph Smith (Founder of the LDS church) brought his new teaching, claiming it was divinely inspired, he brought teachings that were in direct conflict with orthodox Christianity. He claimed that certain truths were lost shortly after the death of the apostles in the late 1st century and/or early 2nd century. They call this the Great Apostasy. Here is what the official LDS church website says:
“While Jesus Christ was on the earth, He established His Church. Following His death and the deaths of His Apostles, some of the precious truths He taught and His sacred authority were lost for a time. This time period is known as the Great Apostasy.”
“Through the power of God, Joseph Smith translated an ancient record written by prophets who lived on the American continents and taught and testified of Jesus Christ. This ancient record is called the Book of Mormon and stands alongside the Bible as another testament that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of mankind.”
The trouble is, the golden plates that Smith claimed to have translated into the Book of Mormon from “reformed Egyptian” were said to have been taken from the Earth after they had been translated. The biggest criticism of the authenticity of the Book of Mormon has always been that there is no way to test the translation. The Rosetta Stone that unlocked the Egyptian language had been found in the year 1799, and in Europe, Egyptologists had been laboring on the ancient Egyptian language ever since. There were people who could confirm or deny Smith’s translation in his own day. But even if Egyptologists who knew how to translate the language were in America, or even in the same city as Joseph Smith, they wouldn’t be able to test his translation because there were no plates or even facsimiles (copies) of the plates to examine.
So what does this have to do with the book of Abraham? Well, the book of Abraham has something that the Book of Mormon doesn’t. Allow me to take you back to the summer of 1835. An entrepreneur by the name of Michael Chandler came to Kirtland Ohio, where the LDS church headquarters were located at the time. Chandler was traveling around with four mummies and multiple scrolls of papyrus (an ancient form of paper) from Egypt. Chandler claimed that these scrolls dated back to the time of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the LDS church was elated! They had been told that Joseph had been given the ability from God to translate the Book of Mormon from an ancient form of Egyptian, and so believed that he would also be able to translate these scrolls. And so, they purchased the mummies and scrolls from Chandler for Joseph Smith to translate as he claimed to have done with the Book of Mormon. Joseph even claimed, after examining the scrolls, that those exact scrolls were written by Abraham himself! Smith came out with his translation of these scrolls in 1842 and called it the Book of Abraham. Joseph included with his translation certain facsimiles of pictures and hieroglyphs that were on the scrolls. This is what the Book of Mormon lacks. There is no original, or even copy of the original golden plates that can be examined by scholars to determine the validity of the translation, but with the Book of Abraham, Joseph included in the published work a copy he had drawn of what he had translated and some images that he interpreted from the scrolls themselves!
Now eventually the Book of Abraham made its way to Europe and to leading Egyptologists such as Theodule Deveria who examined the translation and explanations of the images by Joseph Smith from drawings of the scrolls borrowed from the LDS church. The results were quite disappointing for the LDS. Deveria wrote a scathing review of Smith’s interpretation of the drawings (I’ve included a link below to an excerpt from his analysis in the recommended resources). But the LDS weren’t convinced. After all, Deveria only had drawings of what was on the papyri, not the originals themselves, so perhaps the drawings he examined were damaged in transport or perhaps they weren’t that accurate or maybe there was some other explanation for why Smith’s translation and interpretation were deemed inaccurate. And so, until scholars examined the originals that Joseph Smith used, devout members would give the Book of Abraham the benefit of the doubt. But this was complicated in October of 1871 when the original papyri were believed to have perished in the Great Chicago Fire. But in 1966, ten fragments of papyrus were found in New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, and upon inspection were confirmed to be some of the very papyrus that the LDS church had purchased from Michael Chandler in 1835! This was a momentous occasion in history as the ability to confirm or deny Joseph Smith’s ability -divinely given or otherwise- to translate the Egyptian language into English was once again a reality.
The examinations of Smith’s translation by Egyptologists were clear and unanimous, so much so that the LDS church had no choice but to write this about the Book of Abraham on their own website: “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...” (Translation and Historicity of the Book of Abraham, churchofjesuschrist.org). Yes, their website actually says that! Of course they go on to try and explain why the Book of Abraham is still authentic in another sense, and I’ll deal with those explanations toward the end of this abnormally long article, but for now I’d like to show you one of the facsimiles that Joseph Smith interpreted with the interpretation of an actual Egyptologist, the aforementioned Theodule Deveria. As you read Deveria’s response, keep in mind that the original papyrus was broken and incomplete, and Joseph filled in the missing parts on his copy. Here is what is known in this discussion as Facsimile No.1:
From a work published by Franklin D. Richards in 1851 AD. Woodcut done by Richard James' shop., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
And here is Joseph Smith’s interpretation:
Fig. 1. The Angel of the Lord.
Fig. 2. Abraham fastened upon an altar.
Fig. 3. The idolatrous priest of Elkenah attempting to offer up Abraham as a sacrifice.
Fig. 4. The altar for sacrifice by the idolatrous priests, standing before the gods of Elkenah, Libnah, Mahmackrah, Korash, and Pharaoh.
Fig. 5. The idolatrous god of Elkenah.
Fig. 6. The idolatrous god of Libnah.
Fig. 7. The idolatrous god of Mahmackrah.
Fig. 8. The idolatrous god of Korash.
Fig. 9. The idolatrous god of Pharaoh.
Fig. 10. Abraham in Egypt.
Fig. 11. Designed to represent the pillars of heaven, as understood by the Egyptians.
Fig. 12. Raukeeyang, signifying expanse, or the firmament over our heads; but in this case, in relation to this subject, the Egyptians meant it to signify Shaumau, to be high, or the heavens, answering to the Hebrew word, Shaumahyeem.
Now let’s look at Theodule Deveria’s interpretation:
Fig. 1. The soul of Osiris, under the form of a hawk (which should have a human head).
Fig. 2. Osiris coming to life on his funeral couch, which is in the shape of a lion.
Fig. 3. The god Anubis (who should have a jackal’s head) effecting the resurrection of Osiris.
Fig. 4. The funeral bed of Osiris, under which are placed the four sepulchral vessels called canopes, each of them surmounted by the head of one of the four genii.
Fig. 5. Kebh - son - iw, with a hawk’s head.
Fig. 6. Tioumautew, with a jackal’s head.
Fig. 7. Hapi, with a dog’s head.
Fig. 8. Amset, with a human head.
Fig. 9. The sacred crocodile, symbolic of the god Sebet.
Fig. 10. Alter laden with offerings.
Fig. 11. An ornament peculiar to Egyptian art.
Fig. 12. Customary representation of ground in Egyptian paintings. (The word Shaumau is not Egyptian,and the Hebrew word ָשַׁ֫מיִם is badly copied.)
It is clear that Joseph Smith had no ability given to him to translate the Egyptian language into English. So why then does the LDS church still accept the Book of Abraham as scripture? The dominant answer to this problem is to say that Joseph Smith did not translate the Book of Abraham in the normal sense of the word “translate,” but that the examination of the papyrus served as a catalyst of sorts for Smith to receive revelation from God about the life of Abraham.
I don’t think I have to explain why this theory is flawed, but I will simply say that I could find a copy of Mein Kampf written in German and flip through the pages and let my imagination run free, as I don’t understand a lick of German, and say that the book dated back to the 300’s B.C. and described the life of Alexander the Great before he became the ruler of the Greco-Macedonian empire. I could make it as elaborate as I fancy to! Perhaps I would say that Mein Kampf translated into English told the story of Alexander aspiring to become a world renowned artist growing up, but that his father, Philip, forced him to become a skilled fighter and war strategist. When a German scholar who studied the life of Adolf Hitler critiqued my translation of Mein Kampf, saying that it has nothing to do with Alexander the Great but instead describes the ideology of Hitler, I could simply say that I didn’t “translate” it in the normative sense, but that I merely received revelations about the life of Alexander the Great by musing over the linguistic symbols in the pages of the book and that my published translation of Mein Kampf was therefore still valid. Of course, there is no justification for anyone to believe what I had written about Alexander. Similarly, there is no justification for believing what Joseph Smith wrote about Abraham based on this kind of logic.
The other explanation, which is also laid out in the aforementioned LDS website article Translation and Historicity of the Book of Abraham, is that Smith was told by God the original meaning of the images, or vignettes, and that the illustrations really were from the time of Abraham and truly depicted events in the life of Abraham, but that these images were later repurposed by Egyptians who changed and gave new meaning to the images included in the papyri. This theory suffers from a couple of major problems. First, there is no evidence of this ever taking place, and there is no reason to believe that this repurposing happened, indicating that this attempt to salvage the authenticity of Smith’s interpretation/translation is ad hoc. That is, it is offered as a solution simply for the sake of solving the problem, not because there is any evidence or good reason to believe it. Second, this explanation as well as the first one I mentioned rely on distorting the meaning of “translation,” or just ignoring outright the fact that Smith claimed to have translated a foreign language into English. In fact, from the diary entries of Joseph Smith himself, we have good reason to believe that he meant “translate” in the normative sense of the word. Here are just a few examples from his diaries:
Sunday, July 5, 1835 – "... with W. W. Phelps and Oliver Cowdery as scribes, I commenced the translation of some of the characters or hieroglyphics, and much to our joy found that one of the scrolls contained the writings of Abraham, another the writings of Joseph of Egypt – more full account of which will appear in its place, as I proceed to examine or unfold them. Truly we can say, the Lord is beginning to reveal the abundance of peace and truth." (History of the Church, 2:236)
Late July, 1835 – "The remainder of this month, 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)
Thursday, November 26, 1835 – "At home. We spent the day in transcribing Egyptian characters from the papyrus. I am severely afflicted with a cold." (An American Prophet’s Record, 68; cf. History of the Church, 2:320-21)
In conclusion, although much more is left to be said on this subject, there is no evidence that Joseph Smith had any gift of translation from God. More importantly, by claiming that God had given him this gift, in light of the undeniable evidence that Smith had no such gift, we can conclude with a great deal of certainty that Joseph Smith lied about his divine inspiration, proving definitively that he was a false prophet.
And for any LDS members that stumble across this article, I don’t write any of this out of hate for you or your organization. I wish for this to be to you a branch of hope to pull you from the lies and deception of Joseph Smith and an invitation to accept the true gospel. For you to be saved is my goal and my prayer.
Recommended Resources:
An Egyptologist’s Response to Translation and Historicity of the Book of Abraham by Robert K. Ritner
Translation and Historicity of the Book of Abraham (uchicago.edu)
A Translation of the Apparent Source of the Book of Abraham by Egyptologist Klaus Baer
The Breathing Permit of Hor - [PDF Document] (fdocuments.in)
Some of Deveria’s conclusions about the Book of Abraham:
A Journey to Great-Salt-Lake City - Jules Remy, Julius Lucius Brenchley - Google Books
Overview of the Evidence Against the Book of Abraham by Mike Winger