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This is a shortened summary of a longer article on the Joseph Smith Papyri. |
In July 1835, Joseph Smith purchased a collection of papyri and mummies that had been discovered in Egypt and brought to the United States. Believing that one of the rolls contained, "the writings of Abraham while he was in Egypt," and "purportedly written by his own hand, upon papyrus,"[1] Joseph commenced a translation of the papyri.
The original papyri were thought to have been completely destroyed in the Chicago fire of 1871. Fragments, however, including Facsimile number 1, were discovered in 1967 in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, and given to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Critics have three major points of contention with the Book of Abraham:
It seems reasonable to conclude that Joseph believed that Abraham himself, with pen in hand, wrote the very words that he was translating. Most modern scholars (including LDS scholars), however, date the papyri to a few centuries before Christ.
This issue is very similar to that of Book of Mormon geography. It is very likely that Joseph Smith believed in a hemispheric Book of Mormon geography—it made sense to his understanding of the world around him. Like anyone else, Joseph tried to understand new information by integrating it with his current knowledge. So, likewise, with the Abrahamic papyri: Joseph, by way of revelation, saw that the papyri contained scriptural teachings of Abraham. It would be natural, therefore, to assume that Abraham wrote the papyri.
As Dr. John Gee explains, there is a major difference, he explains, "between the date of a text [the information contained on the papyri] and the date of a manuscript [the papyri itself]."[2]
It's possible that the original Book of Abraham "text" was written by Abraham and then "passed down through his descendants (the Jews), some of whom took a copy to Egypt where it was copied (after being translated) onto a later manuscript."[4]
(Main article: Kirtland Egyptian Papers)
Circa 1836 (while in Kirtland Ohio) Joseph and some of his scribes were involved in a project which indicates that: (a) either Joseph attempted to translate the Egyptian characters into English, or (b) that Joseph and his scribes were attempting to match the characters on the papyri with the already translated text. Several of the verses from the first chapter of Abraham are recorded on papyri next to Egyptian characters. The Egyptian characters on some of the Kirtland Egyptian Papers (KEP) were transcribed from the characters on the papyri immediately following Facsimile 1. In the Book of Abraham we read:
While this would seem to suggest that the Book of Breathings was the source of the Book of Abraham, Egyptologists agree that the Book of Breathings doesn’t have anything to do with Abraham, and that Joseph’s supposed “translations” of those characters are not actual Egyptological translations. While critics see this as proof that Joseph was a false prophet, Latter-day Saints generally believe that Joseph translated the Book of Abraham prior to the creation of the KEP and then he, and other early LDS brethren, tried to match the translated text to what they believed were the characters that were used to illicit the translation.[5] But the question remains: Why would it appear that Joseph thought these Egyptian characters translated into Abrahamic scripture when they clearly do not?
Yale-trained Egyptologist, Dr. John Gee, believes that Joseph Smith originally had five papyrus scrolls.[6] Of these five scrolls, only eleven fragments of two scrolls have survived. Dr. Nibley writes:
Nothing like this has survived today. Dr. Gee estimates that the scroll containing Facsimile 1 may have been ten feet long[8] and that in all, Joseph may have had eight times as much papyri as what is currently extant.[9] It is very likely that the papyri from which Joseph translated the Book of Abraham, has been lost.
In some ancient examples, Egyptian papyri contained more than one document. Some LDS scholars argue that the Book of Abraham material was appended to the end of the Book of Breathings text.[10]
We know of at three distinct instances wherein a Jewish redactor (editor) incorporated Egyptian symbolism into Jewish texts. LDS researcher, Kevin Barney, offers the example of an ancient Egyptian book—the Instructions of Amenemope—which may have been the source for parts of the biblical book of Proverbs.[11]
Instead of focusing on how Egyptians of the 2nd century B.C. or 2000 B.C. understood the motifs, Barney convincingly argues that Abraham did not draw the facsimiles (which date nearly two thousand years after Abraham lived) but that these Egyptian vignettes "were either adopted [copied wholesale as the Egyptians drew them] or adapted [altered to more accurately reflect the Semitic perspective] by an Egyptian-Jewish redactor as illustrations of the attempt on Abraham's life and Abraham's teaching astronomy to the Egyptians."[12] If we accept a Jewish redactor adapting Egyptian motifs to a Hebrew understanding, we can easily appreciate the possibility that a Jewish redactor may have attached the Book of Abraham manuscript to the Book of Breathings in order to graphically convey the doctrines portrayed in the manuscript.
When Joseph read that Abraham referred to Facsimile 1 ("the representation") at the beginning of "this record,” Joseph may have thought this indicated that the "record" of Abraham was part of the early portion of the scroll and thus they they believed that the first Egyptian characters were those that told the story of Abraham. In reality, however, "this record" probably referred to the beginning of the combined scrolls (that begins with Facsimile 1) but not the beginning of the Abrahamic text (which would have been appended to the Book of Breathings scroll).[13]
It must be remembered that Joseph could not read Egyptian. He did not "translate" in the normal sense. He translated by the power of God. It is possible that Joseph, at times, translated the Book of Mormon while the plates were covered, or perhaps even while the plates were removed from the room.
Since Facsimile 1 appears to be a fairly typical scene from Egyptian funerary texts, the critics note that other similar Egyptian motifs depict the priest (an embalmer) with the head of Anubis (an Egyptian god) rather than a bald, human head. Other comparable Egyptian embalming scenes do not show the priest holding a knife, they do not show any man pleading or praying, and they generally show two hawks. The critics claim that Joseph Smith drew in the missing parts by adding (incorrectly) those things which we find in the LDS version of this Egyptian scene. What Joseph saw as fingers of Abraham's outstretched hands, for instance, were actually (according to the critics) the wing-tips of the missing second hawk.
Many LDS scholars believe that the scroll was damaged after Joseph translated the vignette and some evidence seems to support this view. One early Latter-day Saint who saw the papyri in 1841, for instance, described them as containing the scene of an altar with "'a man bound and laid thereon, and a Priest with a knife in his hand, standing at the foot, with a dove over the person bound on the Altar with several Idol gods standing around it.'"[14] Similarly, Reverend Henry Caswall, who visited Nauvoo in April 1842, had a chance to see some of the Egyptian papyri. Caswall, who was hostile to the Saints, described Facsimile 1 as having a "'man standing by him with a drawn knife.'"[15]
Some considerations: there is at least some evidence that the LDS version has precedence in ancient Egyptian drawings. Some LDS researchers, for instance, have argued that the fingers/wing-tips look significantly more like fingers (according to Egyptian drawings) than hawk wing-tips. A number of scholars have noted that the Egyptians were very specific in how they drew wings and thumbs.[16]
It's also interesting to note that although embalming priests are typically drawn with Anubis heads in Book of Breathings motifs, other Egyptian graphics show that Egyptian priests are represented as bald and that Anubis heads were worn as masks to emulate the gods.[17] When compared to other Egyptian drawings, some of the Book of Abraham restorations are plausible.
Another consideration: We don't know that Joseph was the responsible party for sketching in the missing portions of Facsimile 1. It is possible that one of Joseph's contemporaries "restored" the missing parts, or it is possible that a Jewish redactor or some other Jewish copyist "restored" the parts in order to more closely approximate the details conveyed by the Abrahamic text. It is certainly also possible that Joseph "restored" the missing parts either because they were in the original papyri—as edited by the Jewish redactor—or because Joseph felt that such restorations more accurately reflected the Book of Abraham's intended use of the graphic as pertaining to the details discussed in the text.
Joseph's amendments to later editions of the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine & Covenants, and even the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible, are all instructive when we compare the graphical alterations in Facsimile 1. In each case, Joseph Smith—by way of revelation, inspiration, or prophetic analysis—"restored" or amended scripture to more closely approximate the additional insights he had gleaned by divine revelation.
Despite the claims of the critics, there is plenty of room for belief in Joseph’s prophetic abilities. Newer research into ancient Abrahamic lore provides intriguing support for the antiquity of the LDS Book of Abraham. Some of this evidence includes authentic ancient names, traditions, Egyptological interpretations as well as ancient cosmologies—all harmonious with what we find in the Book of Abraham, and generally out of place in Joseph’s milieu. When we critically examine the charges against the Book of Abraham in light of what we now know about ancient Jewish traditions and the adaptation of Egyptian iconography, we find that an ancient Book of Abraham is not only plausible, but believable.
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