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Response to claims made in "Chapter 11: Fall of the Book of Abraham"

329-330

Claim

• Joseph claimed that the papyrus was written by Abraham himself.

•  ^[ATTENTION!]

• Date of text vs. papyri

330-331

Claim

• Hugh Nibley said that the papyri does not prove the Book of Abraham to be true and the LDS scholars were unprepared.

• Daily Universe, Brigham Young University, December 1, 1967
• BYU Studies, Winter 1968, pp.171-72 (Vol. 8, No. 2, Prolegomena to Any Study of The Book of Abraham")

• Nibley was not of the opinion that scripture could be provided save by the Holy Ghost.
• Most scholars were "unprepared" because they had not prepared themselves to study Egyptian: "...a few faded and tattered little scraps of papyrus may serve to remind the Latter-day Saints of how sadly they have neglected serious education....Wholly committed and given fair warning, the Mormons have deserved even the unfair verdict that the world passed against them and the Prophet in 1912, when eight professional scholars condemned Joseph Smith's interpretations of the Facsimiles as utterly absurd; for had any of the Saints during the past century ever taken the pains to check up on the actual state of Egyptian studies in the world, it would have been an easy thing to show how abyssmally inept the performance of Dr. Spalding's panel of experts really was" (BYU Studies article cited by Tanners).
• Nibley himself was fairly well suited to a study of the papyri:

In reality, Dr. Nibley's first study of Egyptian was in 1927; he used it in his Ph.D. dissertation and in articles published in 1945, 1948, 1949, 1956, to mention but a few examples. In 1959, while on sabbatical leave at the University of California at Berkeley, Nibley became Klaus Baer's first student in Egyptian and learned Coptic at the same time. It was during the summer of 1964 that Nibley studied under both Baer and Wilson at the University of Chicago. When the papyri appeared, it had been forty years since Nibley's first introduction to Egyptian. If there was anything Nibley was relatively new at in 1968, it was Coptic, but he had even published in scholarly journals on texts in that language as well. ^[2]

335

Claim

• Since the translation of the papyri was turned over to Hugh Nibley, this proves that the prophet does not have the ability to translate ancient records.

•  ^[ATTENTION!]

• The Book of Abraham has already been given to us. Why would it need to be "retranslated"? Prophets only translate when no one else is able to do the job (2 Nephi 27꞉15-20).
• Nibley insisted that the papyri in the Church's possession were not the Book of Abraham.

336

Claim

• Facsimile 1 does not show Abraham fastened to an altar being sacrificed, but instead shows Hor being prepared for burial.

•  ^[ATTENTION!]

• The authors are too quick to judge:

There are also a number of other ancient Egyptian texts that contain references to Abraham, including a recently discovered Egyptian lion couch scene like that of Facsimile Number 1 of the book of Abraham that explicitly mentions the name of Abraham. Anti-Mormon critics have been quick to point out the absurdity of associating Abraham with this pagan Egyptian scene, and yet now we have clear proof that this association is an ancient one. Again, these things have only been recently discovered, and Joseph Smith could not have known about them nor had access to them. ^[3]

• Book of Abraham papyri (Long article) — Restoring gaps in the drawings

337

Claim

• LDS leaders were unable to detect the Hofmann forgeries. If they were really led be revelation, they should have been able to figure out that the documents were fake.

•  ^[ATTENTION!]

•  Author(s) impose(s) own fundamentalism on the Saints
• Mark Hofmann

339

Claim

• "Mormon elder" Dee Jay Nelson, who claimed to be an Egyptologist, translated the papyri but was unable to find any mention of Abraham. Even though Nelson was later exposed to be a fraud, "This is not to say that his work has no merit."

•  ^[ATTENTION!]

•  Absurd claim: the work was a fraud, and Nelson had no qualifications, but since it attacks the Church, Tanners aren't willing to dispense with it!

342

Claim

• Joseph Smith's "Egyptian Alphabet and Grammer" contain text that matches a portion of one of the papyri. Joseph Smith translated a "large number of English words" from each Egyptian character.

•  ^[ATTENTION!]

• The Kirtland Egyptian Papers

343

Claim

• Joseph used four lines from the papyrus to generate 49 verses in the Book of Abraham.

•  ^[ATTENTION!]

• The Kirtland Egyptian Papers

351

The author(s) make(s) the following claim:

The papyri have been dated to a much later time than Abraham, therefore they could not have been written by Abraham's "own hand on papyrus."

FAIR's Response

Question: Why does the Book of Abraham state that it was written by Abraham's "own hand upon papyrus" if the papyri date to after the Abrahamic period?

"called the Book of Abraham, written by his own hand, upon papyrus"

When the Prophet Joseph Smith published the first installments of the Book of Abraham in 1842, the caption in the Times and Seasons read as follows:

"A translation of some ancient Records that have fallen into our hands, from the Catacombs 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."^[4]

Kirtland Egyptian Paper (KEP) - A1 likewise has the following caption:

“Translation of the Book of Abraham written by his own hand upon papyrus and found in the catacombs of Egypt.”^[5]

The papyri donʼt date to Abrahamʼs time

The phrase “by his own hand upon papyrus” has drawn a number of investigative remarks. Critics have alleged that the phrase “by his own hand upon papyrus” must necessarily be indicating that Joseph Smith thought that the papyrus he obtained was written by the hand of Abraham himself. The problem, however, is that the papyri donʼt date to Abrahamʼs time. Critics have argued that this is, therefore, another point against Joseph Smith and the authenticity of the Book of Abraham.

LDS scholars have approached this issue from a number of perspectives

LDS scholars have approached this issue from a number of perspectives. There are two underlying LDS scholarly approaches that have been advanced in evaluating the significance of this phrase in the heading for the Book of Abraham. These approaches are:

1. “By His Own Hand Upon Papyrus” as an Egyptian Title
2. “By His Own Hand Upon Papyrus” as a 19th Century Redaction

Whether or not one accepts that the phrase “by his own hand upon papyrus” is an ancient or modern redaction to the text, a few things are certain. ^[6]

First, if the phrase was a part of the ancient title of the text then there is no justification from the Egyptological evidence that the phrase requires a holographic nature of the papyri. The ancient Egyptians who used the phrase or ones like it never mandated that such be viewed as implying holographic claims.

Second, if the phrase is a 19th century redaction to the text then this is an issue concerning not the Book of Abraham's authenticity but the assumptions of Joseph Smith and his associates. If Joseph Smith did in fact harbor such assumptions, that has nothing to do with the authenticity of the actual Book of Abraham itself. Likewise, unless it can be shown that Joseph Smith’s views of the nature of the authorship of the papyri came by revelatory means, then one cannot hold the Prophet to an impossible standard of perfection (one that the Prophet never established for himself) and criticize him for merely doing what humans do; have opinions and speculations.

Thirdly, if the phrase “by his own hand upon papyrus” is a 19th century redaction and if Joseph Smith assumed a holographic nature of the papyri, then the whole issue is one of assumption. If one believes that Prophets must be right about everything or they are false prophets, then such an assumption reflects only the thoughts and background of the person holding the assumption. The same for those who hold no such assumption and acknowledge the fallibility of Prophets. We should therefore be careful to not impose our own assumptions on those figures in the past who may not have shared such assumptions or standards.

In each of these three cases, the phrase “by his own hand upon papyrus” cannot be used as evidence against the authenticity of the Book of Abraham.

Regardless of which approach may be correct, it is clear that the assumptions of those critical of the authenticity of the Book of Abraham are unfounded in this regard.^[7] Either option resolves the issue; both would have to be untenable for the critics to have a case.

358-361

Claim

• In Facsimile #1, the penciled-in restoration is incorrect.

•  ^[ATTENTION!]

• Book of Abraham papyri (Long article) — Restoring gaps in the drawings

Notes

1. ↑ Michael D. Rhodes, "The Book of Abraham: Divinely Inspired Scripture (Review of By His Own Hand upon Papyrus: A New Look at the Joseph Smith Papyri by Charles M. Larson)," FARMS Review of Books 4/1 (1992): 120–126. off-site
2. ↑ John Gee, "A Tragedy of Errors (Review of By His Own Hand Upon Papyrus: A New Look at the Joseph Smith Papyri by Charles M. Larson," FARMS Review of Books 4/1 (1992): 93–119. off-site
3. ↑ Michael D. Rhodes, "The Book of Abraham: Divinely Inspired Scripture (Review of By His Own Hand upon Papyrus: A New Look at the Joseph Smith Papyri by Charles M. Larson)," FARMS Review of Books 4/1 (1992): 120–126. off-site; citing John Gee, "Abraham in Ancient Egyptian Texts," Ensign 22 (July 1992): 60-62. off-site
4. ↑ "The Book of Abraham," Times and Seasons 3 (1842): 704. KEPA 4, the manuscript used for publication of the first installments of the Book of Abraham and written in the hand of Willard Richards, likewise contains this caption used in the Times and Seasons.
5. ↑ Hugh Nibley, An Approach to the Book of Abraham, edited by John Gee, Vol. 18 in the Collected Works of Hugh Nibley (Salt Lake City and Provo, Utah: Deseret Book / FARMS, 2009), 546. ISBN 1606410547.
6. ↑ This wiki article is based on a paper written by Stephen O. Smoot and included here with his permission. Given the nature of a wiki project, the original may have been edited, added to, or otherwise modified.
7. ↑ Unless otherwise noted, the assumption underlying these theories run along the so-called “missing papyrus theory” as proposed by scholars such as Professor John Gee. This theory states that Joseph Smith owned a portion of physical papyri dating to the Ptolemaic Era that contained the text of the Book of Abraham as translated by the Prophet but that said papyri were subsequently destroyed and are no longer extant. See: Missing papyrus? for further details.