By Sandra Tanner

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When Marlin K. Jensen, retired General Authority and historian of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was asked in November of 2011 if the LDS leaders were aware that people are leaving the Mormon Church in droves after learning of troubling aspects of church history, he responded:

The fifteen men [First Presidency and Quorum of Twelve] really do know, and they really care. And they realize that maybe since Kirtland, we never have had a period of, I’ll call it apostasy, like we’re having right now; largely over these issues.¹

Evidently in response to the growing number of Mormons disturbed by researching sensitive topics on the Internet, on September 9, 2014, the LDS Church issued a directive to all “General Authorities; Area Seventies; Stake, Mission, and District Presidents; Bishops and Branch Presidents” informing them of the new Gospel Topics section of the LDS Church’s website:

The purpose of the Gospel Topics section is to provide accurate and transparent information on Church history and doctrine within the framework of faith. . . . When Church members have questions regarding Church history and doctrine, possibly arising when detractors spread misinformation and doubt, you may want to direct their attention to these resources.²

[Bold in quotations is added for emphasis and does not appear in originals.]

According to the Salt Lake Tribune, “For about a year, the LDS Church has been posting on its website carefully worded, scholarly essays about touchy topics from the faith’s history and theology.”³ A few of these essays are:

• “First Vision Accounts”
• “Are Mormons Christian?”
• “Book of Mormon Translation”
• “Race and the Priesthood”
• “Plural Marriage and Families in Early Utah”
• “Book of Mormon and DNA studies”
• “Becoming like God”
• “Peace and Violence among 19th-Century Latter-day Saints”
• “Translation and Historicity of the Book of Abraham”

The Book of Abraham

In 1835 Michael Chandler brought his traveling exhibit of Egyptian artifacts to the Mormon town of Kirtland, Ohio. Upon examination, Joseph Smith offered to buy the collection as he had discerned that two of the Egyptian papyri contained the writings of the Old Testament patriarchs Abraham and Joseph. After purchasing the mummies and scrolls for $2,400 (approximately $65,500 in today’s dollars), Smith embarked on his new translation project, starting with the Book of Abraham scroll. If these were truly the writings of Abraham it would be the oldest known biblical text. Even the Dead Sea Scrolls would dim in comparison. Smith’s new scripture was officially canonized by the LDS Church in 1880.

Like the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith professed to be translating an ancient record, preserved by God to come forth in these last days. However, Egyptologists find no connection between the Egyptian text on the papyri and Smith’s Book of Abraham. Smith’s supposed translation has been challenged for over 150 years, starting with Théodule Déveria in 1861, concluding with Dr. Ritner’s 2014 article, “A Response to ‘Translation and Historicity of the Book of Abraham.’”⁴

In July of this year the LDS Church added “Translation and Historicity of the Book of Abraham” to Gospel Topics in an effort to downplay the fact that the papyri Joseph Smith purchased in 1835 have nothing to do with Abraham. The church-owned Deseret News reported:

A new essay published Tuesday by the LDS Church on its website says scholarly or critical efforts to determine Joseph Smith’s ability to translate papyri are “likely futile.”⁵

The new Gospel Topics essay acknowledges that the papyri have no relationship to the text of 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 . . . ⁶

The essay concludes:

The veracity and value of the book of Abraham cannot be settled by scholarly debate concerning the book’s translation and historicity. The book’s status as scripture lies in the eternal truths it teaches and the powerful spirit it conveys. . . . The truth of the book of Abraham is ultimately found through careful study of its teachings, sincere prayer and the confirmation of the Spirit.⁷

Notice how they concede that the papyri contain nothing about Abraham yet maintain the Book of Abraham is scripture on the basis of a spiritual experience. However, when Joseph Smith examined the papyri he specifically claimed to be translating the ancient documents. On July 5, 1835, Smith commented:

I commenced the translation of some of the characters or hieroglyphics, and much to our joy found that one of the rolls contained the writings of Abraham, another the writings of Joseph of Egypt, etc.⁸

In fact, the declaration that it is a literal translation is still reflected in the heading of the book itself:

The Book of Abraham; Translated from the papyrus, by Joseph Smith A Translation of some ancient Records that have fallen into our hands from the catacombs of Egypt. The writings of Abraham while he was in Egypt, called the Book of Abraham, written by his own hand, upon papyrus.⁹

That Smith was purporting to literally translate the Egyptian material is seen in an entry in the History of the Church:

The remainder of this month [July 1835], I 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.¹⁰

Identifying the Scroll for the Book of Abraham

While the LDS Church states that it is not known which piece of the papyri Smith used for his new scripture, it is clear that he was claiming to translate the scroll called “Breathing Permit of Hor.” The first illustration on this papyrus, with added details, became Facsimile 1 in the Book of Abraham. It is stated very specifically in Abraham 1:12 “that you may have a knowledge of this altar, I will refer you to the representation at the commencement of this record.” But herein lies the problem: Scholars agree that Facsimile 1 has nothing to do with Abraham. In the LDS article we read:

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. Scholars have identified the papyrus fragments as parts of standard funerary texts that were deposited with mummified bodies. These fragments date to between the third century B.C.E. and the first century C.E., long after Abraham lived.¹¹

Now that the original papyrus used for Facsimile 1 has been identified it is clear that it was damaged in certain areas before it came into the Mormons’ possession. Evidently Smith or one of his associates penciled in what they thought would have been the missing parts.

However, they guessed wrong. The black standing figure is Anubis, god of the underworld, who would have had the head of a jackal, not that of a man, and he would not have been holding a knife. The following example is a similar scene in an Egyptian funeral text, showing the god Anubis standing over Osiris.

Dr. Robert Ritner, Professor of Egyptology at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, explains:

The published text of the Book of Abraham is accompanied by three woodcut “Facsimiles” with explanations authored by Joseph Smith himself. The facsimiles are all based on ancient Egyptian documents, and the Egyptian texts of all three can now be deciphered. In addition, the representations of all three conform to well-known Egyptian models. Facsimiles 1 and 3 represent sections of one papyrus: the “Breathing Permit of Hor” (P.J 1), . . . Comparison of the surviving initial vignette of the Hor papyrus with Facsimile 1 proved beyond doubt, as the LDS web post agrees, that it was “the vignette that became facsimile 1.” However, neither Facsimile 1 nor 2 is a true copy, and both contain added forgeries, including the human-head and knife of the supposed “idolatrous priest of Elkenah” (Fig. 3 on Facsimile 1) as can be seen in the crude pencil additions to the original papyrus sheet as mounted and “improved” for publication by the LDS church in 1842. ¹²

Dr. Ritner further commented:

All of Smith’s published “explanations” are incorrect, including the lone example defended by the new [LDS] web posting: the water in which a crocodile is swimming (Fig. 12 of Facsimile 1), supposedly a representation of “the firmament over our heads . . .” Although Egyptians might place heavenly boats in the sky, that is not relevant “in this case” where the water is placed below the figures and represents the Nile, not the sky. The selective defense of these explanations by the church is telling, and all other explanations are simply indefensible except by distorting Egyptian evidence.

Smith’s Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar

Shortly after the Mormons purchased the papyri, Joseph Smith started working on an alphabet and grammar of the Egyptian language to aid in his translation work.¹³

The LDS Gospel Topics article continues with its emphasis on Smith’s study of the characters and his translation:

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. This grammar, as it was called, consisted of columns of hieroglyphic characters followed by English translation 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. Neither the rules nor the translations in the grammar book correspond to those recognized by Egyptologists today. 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. ¹⁴

The lack of correlation between Smith’s Alphabet and Grammar and the papyri demonstrate Smith’s total lack of knowledge of anything Egyptian. Included in Smith’s Egyptian working papers are parts of the text of the Book of Abraham lined up with Egyptian characters taken from the Breathing Permit document which were attached to the original drawing of Facsimile 1. Researcher Christopher C. Smith observed:

Consistent with this conclusion, three handwritten Book of Abraham manuscripts from the Kirtland period contain, in their margins, sequential Egyptian characters from the first column of the Hor Document of Breathing (pJS XI). These characters are matched up with discrete units of English text. They appear to be aligned this way in order to show which portions of the English text were translated from which Egyptian characters.¹⁵

Below is a photo of a manuscript page for the Book of Abraham, with the Egyptian characters copied from the papyrus in the left hand column.¹⁶

Page from the manuscript of the Book of Abraham
(click to view)

Smith’s representation of whole paragraphs being translated from one or two Egyptian symbols is consistent with his earlier claim that the Nephites wrote in “reformed Egyptian” because it took less space than Hebrew (Book of Mormon, Mormon 9:32-33). This is not actually the case, but it gave Smith an excuse for being able to translate whole paragraphs from simple characters.

Below is another example of Smith purporting to translate the “Breathing Permit” in the manuscript pages for the Book of Abraham contained in his Alphabet and Grammar. ¹⁷

Above is a photograph of part of the original papyrus fragment from which Joseph Smith was supposed to have translated the Book of Abraham. To the right is a photograph of the original manuscript of the Book of Abraham as it appears in Joseph Smith’s Egyptian and Grammar. We have numbered some of the characters on the first line of the papyrus fragment for readers to compare them with the corresponding characters found in the handwritten manuscript.

Notice the dozens of words supposedly translated from a character resembling a backward ‘E.’ Dr. Ritner comments:

It is now evident that over half of the text of the Book of Abraham was invented by Smith from only two incomplete lines in the “Breathing Permit of Hôr” (P. JS 1, col. 2 [=Fragment XI], lines 1-2). The few Egyptian words “great lake of Khonsu, [and the Osiris Hôr, the justified] born of Taikhibit, the justified, likewise” were spun into the full Book of Abraham 1:4-2:2.

It is not surprising that Smith’s translation of just a few Egyptian words could become a lengthy narrative.

Before the 1822 decipherment of hieroglyphs by Jean-François Champollion in France, it had been wrongly assumed that the Egyptian writing system was purely symbolic, not phonetic.¹⁸

Further evidence that the Book of Abraham could not have been translated from the Egyptian papyri can be seen in Dr. Ritner’s book, The Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri.

Facsimile Two

Beneath each of the three facsimiles in the Book of Abraham is Smith’s explanation of the drawings. Unfortunately, none of Joseph Smith’s material matches the descriptions given by the Egyptologists. One problem area is Smith’s attempt to restore the missing portions of the round disc known as a hypocephalus, which was placed under the head of the mummy. In LDS scriptures it is referred to as Facsimile 2. Dr. Ritner writes:

Facsimile 2 derives from a separate burial, for an individual named Sheshonq. Large portions of this published “facsimile” were improperly inserted from unrelated papyri.¹⁹

Below is a photo of the earliest drawing of Facsimile 2, (taken from Joseph Smith’s Kirtland Egyptian papers),²⁰ followed by a later version (printed in the Times and Seasons, vol. 3, March 1842). Notice how the areas originally left blank were then filled in for the printed version.

We now know that the Egyptian characters used to fill in the blank spots on Facsimile 2 were actually copied from the Breathing Permit scroll and haphazardly placed on the hypocephalus, rendering the text at that point unintelligible.²¹

Mormon scholar Michael D. Rhodes observed:

A careful examination of Facsimile 2 shows that there is a difference between most of the hieroglyphic signs and the signs on the right third of the figure on the outer edge as well as the outer portions of the sections numbered 12-15. These signs are hieratic, not hieroglyphic, and are inverted, or upside down, to the rest of the text. In fact, they are a fairly accurate copy of lines 2, 3, and 4 of the Joseph Smith Papyrus XI, which contains a portion of the Book of Breathings. Especially clear is the word snsn, in section 14, and part of the name of the mother of the owner of the papyrus, (tay-)uby.t, repeated twice on the outer edge. An ink drawing of the hypocephalus in the Church Historian’s office shows these same areas as being blank. It is likely that these portions were destroyed on the original hypocephalus and someone (the engraver, one of Joseph Smith’s associates, or Joseph himself) copied the lines from the Book of Breathings papyrus for aesthetic purposes.²²

This would be equivalent to finding that your Bible was missing a page so you tore a page from a history book and inserted it in the Bible, upside down, so that the book would have the right number of pages. But the added text would make no sense next to the other pages. Obviously Joseph Smith totally lacked any understanding of the Egyptian material.

Is Min God?

When the hypocephalus was prepared for publication in 1842 Smith had the engraver add numbers to certain figures that would correspond to the explanations underneath the drawing. He identified number 7, the seated figure (lower right area, upside-down) as God:

Represents God sitting upon his throne, revealing, through the heavens the grand Key-words of the Priesthood; as, also, the sign of the Holy Ghost unto Abraham, in the form of a dove.²³

However, this is actually a representation of Min, the Egyptian god of fertility, shown with an erection. LDS scholars have defended Smith’s use of Min to represent God in his regenerative powers. For instance, LDS Egyptologist Michael Rhodes explains:

7. A seated ithyphallic god with a hawk’s tail, holding aloft the divine flail. . . . Before him is what appears to be a bird of some sort, presenting him with an Udjat-eye. . . .

The seated god is clearly a form of Min, the god of the regenerative, procreative forces of nature, perhaps combined with Horus as the hawk’s tail would seem to indicate.

Joseph Smith mentions here the Holy Ghost in the form of a dove and God “revealing through the heavens the grand key-words of the priesthood.” The procreative forces, receiving unusual accentuation throughout the representation, may stand for many divine generative powers, not least of which might be conjoined with the blessings of the Priesthood in one’s posterity eternally.²⁴

This would fit with the LDS theology of God being a resurrected being from another world who achieved godhood and has a tangible body. Brigham Young, the second prophet of the LDS Church, explained:

The birth of the Saviour was as natural as are the births of our children; it was the result of natural action. He partook of flesh and blood—was begotten of his Father, as we were of our fathers.²⁵

While a sexually active god may fit in with LDS theology, it does not represent the God of the Bible. In the book of Numbers we read:

God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent. (Numbers 23:19)

In the book of Romans Paul declared:

Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles. . . . They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. (Romans 1:22-25 NIV)

The Joseph Smith hypocephalus, with its multiple drawings of Egyptian deities, is similar to numerous ones preserved in various museums. Below is a drawing of a hypocephalus in the Leiden Museum in Germany that is very close to the one in the Book of Abraham. Notice that it also has the god Min in the same location on the disc.²⁶

The LDS article claims that “the book of Abraham largely follows the biblical narrative but adds important information regarding Abraham’s life and teachings.”²⁷ The fact that it changes the nature of God is one of the doctrinal problems in the Book of Abraham. The Old Testament is very emphatic that there is only one God— i.e. Isaiah 43:10-11; Isaiah 44:6 and 8. Yet the Book of Abraham introduces a plurality of gods. Below is a comparison between Smith’s translation and Genesis:

Pearl of Great Price Abraham 4:1	Genesis 1:1
And then the Lord said: Let us go down. And they went down at the beginning, and they, that is the Gods, organized and formed the heavens and the earth.	In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

Why should anyone accept the new concepts in the Book of Abraham (plural gods, pre-mortal existence, racial cursing) when there is no historical validity to the book, and its teachings run counter to those of the Bible?²⁸

Facsimile Three

Joseph Smith also totally misidentified all the figures in Facsimile 3. Below is a side by side comparison of the identification of the figures.²⁹

Dr. Ritner explains:

In Facsimile 3, Smith confuses human and animal heads and males with females. No amount of special pleading can change the female “Isis the great, the god’s mother” (Facsimile 3, Fig. 2) into the male “King Pharaoh, whose name is given in the characters above his hand,” as even the LDS author Michael D. Rhodes accepts. Here Smith also misunderstands “Pharaoh” as a personal name rather than a title meaning “king,” so he reads “king king” for a goddess’s name that he claims to have understood on the papyrus!³⁰

Joseph Smith’s explanations of the facsimiles in the Book of Abraham were refuted over one hundred years ago, in 1912, when the major Egyptologists of the day gave their evaluation of the drawings.

Dr. Arthur Mace, Assistant Curator for the Department of Egyptian Art of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York:

The Book of Abraham, it is hardly necessary to say, is a pure fabrication. Cuts 1 and 3 are inaccurate copies of well-known scenes on funeral papyri, and cut 2 is a copy of one of the magical discs which in the late Egyptian period were placed under the heads of mummies. There were about forty of these latter known in museums and they are all very similar in character. Joseph Smith’s interpretation of these cuts is a farrago of nonsense from beginning to end. Egyptian characters can now be read almost as easily as Greek, and five minutes’ study in an Egyptian gallery of any museum should be enough to convince any educated man of the clumsiness of the imposture.

Dr. A. H. Sayce from Oxford, England:

It is difficult to deal seriously with Joseph Smith’s impudent fraud. The fac-simile from the Book of Abraham No. 2 is an ordinary hypocephalus, but the hieroglyphics upon it have been copied so ignorantly that hardly one of them is correct. I need scarce say that Kolob, etc., are unknown to the Egyptian language. . . . Smith has turned the Goddess into a king and Osiris into Abraham.

Dr. Flinders Petrie of London University:

In the first place, they are copies (very badly done) of well known Egyptian subjects of which I have dozens of examples. Secondly, they are all many centuries later than Abraham. . . . the attempts to guess a meaning for them, in the professed explanations, are too absurd to be noticed. It may be safely said that there is not one single word that is true in these explanations.

Dr. James H. Breasted of the Haskell Oriental Museum, University of Chicago:

It will be seen, then, that if Joseph Smith could read ancient Egyptian writing, his ability to do so had no connection with the decipherment of hieroglyphics by European scholars . . . The three fac-similes in question represent equipment which will be and has been found in unnumbered thousands of Egyptian graves . . . The point, then, is that in publishing these fac-similes of Egyptian documents as part of an unique revelation to Abraham, Joseph Smith was attributing to Abraham not three unique documents of which no other copies exist, but was attributing to Abraham a series of documents which were the common property of a whole nation of people who employed them in every human burial, which they prepared.

The full statements of these renowned Egyptologists can be read in our publication, Why Egyptologists Reject the Book of Abraham.³¹

Possible Answers

In an attempt to obscure the problem of purporting the Book of Abraham to be an actual translation the church is now proposing two alternate answers:

1. We may not have the right piece. Since the surviving pieces of papyri have no relationship to Abraham, his writings may have been on one of the missing artifacts. The essay states:

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. . . . 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.³²

2. Smith’s use of the word “translate” does not require a typical definition. The papyri may have served as a catalyst for revelation. Following this line of reasoning, Smith didn’t need the missing pieces. He could have just as easily used a book on geography for his inspiration. The LDS essay continues:

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. They catalyzed a process whereby God gave to Joseph Smith a revelation about the life of Abraham, even if that revelation did not directly correlate to the characters on the papyri.³³

Either way, the church is now admitting that there is absolutely nothing on any of the papyri in its possession that has anything to do with Abraham, that all the pieces of papyri only relate to the Egyptian religion. This would include the three illustrations in the Book of Abraham. Egyptologists can translate most of the material on these drawings and find them to be standard Egyptian burial documents, depicting their numerous deities.

While the LDS article suggests the Book of Abraham material may have been attached to the end of the Breathing Permit papyrus, scholars Andrew W. Cook and Christopher C. Smith have challenged that assumption:

The question then becomes whether the undamaged scroll of Hôr was ever long enough to accommodate a hieratic Book of Abraham source text. The Book of Abraham translation contains 5,506 English words. The hieratic text in the instructions column of the Document of Breathing translates to ~97 English words. This column is ~9 cm wide. Hence, if the Book of Abraham were written on the scroll in the same hieratic font as this portion of the Document of Breathing, it would have taken up ~9(5,506/97)=~511 cm of papyrus. Since the Book of Abraham translation is incomplete, the actual space required for a hieratic original would presumably have been even longer.³⁴

The authors then use mathematical calculations to demonstrate that the papyri could not have been long enough to contain the text of the Book of Abraham.

The LDS Church feels the issues can be resolved through prayer, however, non-Mormon scholars remain unconvinced. After spending considerable time examining the papyri owned by the LDS Church, Dr. Ritner stated:

Such a declaration [that the veracity of the Book of Abraham is to be found in prayer] may seem reasonable to those already predisposed to accept it, but on closer reading, the LDS church posting suggests discomfort with its own conclusions and reasoning. Not a single opposing scholar is mentioned by name, nor are their reasons for rejecting the Book of Abraham. Yet the LDS paper attempts to engage in scholarly debate from a one-sided position, repeatedly citing in the footnotes the same limited set of apologists who are primarily church employees at BYU in Provo.³⁵

While conceding that the truthfulness of the Book of Abraham is a “matter of faith” the Pearl of Great Price Student Manual promotes Joseph Smith’s translation as a great accomplishment since Egyptian could not be deciphered at that time:

The book of Abraham is an evidence of the inspired calling of the Prophet Joseph Smith. It came forth at a time when the study of the ancient Egyptian language and culture was just beginning. The scholars of the 1800s had scarcely begun to explore the field of Egyptology, and yet, with no formal training in ancient languages and no knowledge of ancient Egypt (except his work with the Book of Mormon), Joseph Smith began his translation of the ancient manuscripts. His knowledge and ability came through the power and gift of God, together with his own determination and faith.³⁶

With such emphasis on Smith having “no formal training in ancient languages” and that “study of the ancient Egyptian language” was just beginning, this statement would lead one to conclude that Smith’s translation would have corresponded to an Egyptologists translation. Yet no connection has been found.

Conclusion

Non-LDS Egyptologists have long argued that Smith’s work has no relationship to the ancient Egyptian papyri purchased in 1835. Dr. Ritner, in his article responding to the Gospel Topics essay, observed:

Scholarly rejection of the authenticity of the Book of Abraham is not new and has continued unabated since the study by Jules Remy and Theodule Deveria in 1861, with multiple scholars (including A. H. Sayce, Arthur Mace, Flinders Petrie, and James H. Breasted) dismissing the book’s validity in 1912. With the rediscovery of the papyri at the Metropolitan Museum in New York in 1967, analysis by John Wilson, Richard Parker and Klaus Baer (all 1968) and even the LDS apologist Hugh Nibley (in 1975) disproved any possibility that the Book of Abraham could be an acceptable translation of the surviving Egyptian papyri. My own works on the papyri (in 2002, 2003, 2011 and 2013) showed the same result, as did the LDS-sponsored translations by Michael Rhodes (2002) and the 2005 revision of Nibley’s volume. Thus has arisen a host of alternative defenses for the Book of Abraham, questioning the meaning of the word “translation,” the length of the original papyri, the possibility of a now lost section with the Abraham text, etc.³⁷

Even if one were to concede (which critics do not) that the text for the Book of Abraham was actually contained on one of the missing pieces of papyri, it is clear from the extant papyri that Smith was indeed using them for his supposed “translation.” He believed that the three illustrations taken from the papyri (which were copied and printed with the Book of Abraham) conveyed the same story of Abraham that he was supposedly “translating” from the text, whether that text is on the extant papyri or on the lost pieces. To simply say that “we don’t have all the papyri” does not dismiss the fact that the parts that we do have were clearly used by Smith in creating the Book of Abraham, to one extent or another, and their contents clearly depict not a story of Abraham but rather a common Egyptian funerary scene, as has been concluded by Egyptologists for decades.

In 2011 John Dehlin, a fifth generation Mormon and founder of Mormon Stories podcast, conducted a survey of 3,000 former Mormons, examining the reasons for their loss of faith. One of the top reasons given was loss of faith in Joseph Smith’s supposed translation of the Book of Abraham.³⁸ The LDS Church’s latest article on the Book of Abraham does not provide the answers necessary to stem the tide of defection. Dr. Robert Ritner has responded to their article and demonstrates that their arguments are spurious.³⁹

The LDS article concedes that there is no connection between the papyri and the text of the Book of Abraham. Yet that is exactly how it has been presented to the world for over 170 years. It is time for the LDS Church to decanonize the Book of Abraham and admit that it is a product of Joseph Smith’s imagination.

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Footnotes:

1. Marlin K. Jensen, “Q&A”, John A. Widtsoe Association for Mormon Studies, Utah State University (November 11, 2011). ↩︎
2. Peggy Fletcher Stack, “Mormon Leaders Spread Word About Controversial Essays,” Salt Lake Tribune (September 23, 2014). ↩︎
3. Ibid. ↩︎
4. Dr. Robert Ritner, “A Response To ‘Translation and Historicity of the Book of Abraham,’” (Signature Books, August 2014); online at: https://user.xmission.com/~research/mormonpdf/responseboa.pdf ↩︎
5. “LDS Church Publishes New Web Essay on Book of Abraham,” Deseret News, (July 8, 2014). ↩︎
6. “Translation and Historicity of the Book of Abraham,” Gospel Topics Essays. ↩︎
7. Ibid. ↩︎
8. History of the Church, vol. 2, pp. 235-236. ↩︎
9. “Book of Abraham,” Pearl of Great Price, 2013. ↩︎
10. History of the Church, vol. 2, p. 238. ↩︎
11. “Translation and Historicity of the Book of Abraham,” Gospel Topics Essays. ↩︎
12. Ritner, “A Response to ‘Translation . . . of the Book of Abraham.’” ↩︎
13. H. Michael Marquardt, The Joseph Smith Egyptian Papers, (Salt Lake City: Utah Lighthouse Ministry, 2009); Jerald and Sandra Tanner, Mormonism—Shadow or Reality? (Salt Lake City: Utah Lighthouse Ministry, 1987), pp. 311-326. ↩︎
14. “Translation and Historicity of the Book of Abraham,” Gospel Topics Essays. ↩︎
15. Christopher C. Smith, “That which is Lost”: Assessing the State of Preservation of the Joseph Smith Papyri, The John Whitmer Historical Association Journal, (Spring/Summer 2011), vol. 31, no. 1, p. 74. ↩︎
16. Tanner, Mormonism—Shadow or Reality? p. 312. ↩︎
17. Grant S. Heward and Jerald Tanner, “The Source of the Book of Abraham Identified,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, (Summer 1968), pp. 92-98. ↩︎
18. Ritner, “A Response to ‘Translation . . . of the Book of Abraham.’” ↩︎
19. Ibid. ↩︎
20. Robert Ritner, The Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri, (Salt Lake City: Smith-Pettit Foundation, 2011), p. 273. ↩︎
21. Tanner, Mormonism—Shadow or Reality, pp. 338-344. ↩︎
22. Michael D. Rhodes “The Joseph Smith Hypocephalus . . . Twenty Years Later,” p. 2. [PDF version available here.] ↩︎
23. Pearl of Great Price, Facsimile 2 from the Book of Abraham. ↩︎
24. Michael D. Rhodes, “A Translation and Commentary of the Joseph Smith Hypocephalus,” BYU Studies, (Spring 1977), p. 273. ↩︎
25. Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, vol. 11, p. 268. ↩︎
26. Also see example photo in Wikimedia Commons. ↩︎
27. “Translation and Historicity of the Book of Abraham,” Gospel Topics Essays. ↩︎
28. Salt Lake City Messenger, “The Oldest Biblical Text?” Doctrinal Innovation, (November 2009) no. 113. ↩︎
29. Debunking FAIR’s Debunking, on Book of Abraham, CES Letter, Jeremy Runnells.
    ↩︎
30. Ritner, “A Response to ‘Translation . . . of the Book of Abraham.’” ↩︎
31. F. S. Spalding, Joseph Smith Jr., As a Translator, 1912, pp. 23-27, (reprinted in Why Egyptologists Reject the Book of Abraham, Utah Lighthouse Ministry). ↩︎
32. “Translation and Historicity of the Book of Abraham,” Gospel Topics Essays. ↩︎
33. Ibid. ↩︎
34. Andrew W. Cook and Christopher C. Smith, “The Original Length of the Scroll of Hôr,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, (Winter, 2010), pp. 1-42. ↩︎
35. Ritner, “A Response to ‘Translation . . . of the Book of Abraham.’” ↩︎
36. The Pearl of Great Price Student Manual, Religion 327, LDS Church, 2000, p. 29. ↩︎
37. Ritner, “A Response to ‘Translation . . . of the Book of Abraham.’” ↩︎
38. John Dehlin, “Understanding Mormon Disbelief,” 2012. ↩︎
39. Ritner, “A Response to ‘Translation . . . of the Book of Abraham.’” ↩︎

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