By Jerald and Sandra Tanner
It was just a little over six months ago that the Metropolitan Museum of Art presented to the Mormon Church a collection of papyri which once belonged to Joseph Smith. Before this transaction, it was generally believed that this collection had been completely destroyed in the Chicago fire of 1871.
Joseph Smith had used part of the papyri as the basis for a work he called “The Book of Abraham.” He claimed that Abraham had written this book on papyrus thousands of years ago. In 1842 he published his translation of this book, and the Mormon people accepted it as scripture. It is now published as a part of the Pearl of Great Price—one of the four standard works of the Mormon Church.
When the Mormon leaders announced that the papyri had been found, many members of the Church felt that Joseph Smith’s work had been vindicated. Those who knew the most about the situation, however, advised their people to be cautious. Dr. Sidney B. Sperry, of the Brigham Young University, stated: “. . . as members of the Church we ought not to overrate the importance of this discovery” (Newsletter and Proceedings of the Society for Early Historic Archaeology, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, March 1, 1968, page 8). Dr. James R. Clark gave a similar warning on page 8 of the same publication:
I agree with that point of view, Dr. Sperry. If there is anything we should stress here tonight, it is that conclusions should not be drawn at this point. We might even set ourselves up as a committee of three to serve as a warning voice to alert members of the Church to the great danger of claiming too much at this stage. The new materials have not yet been studied, and it would be better to reserve judgment for a time.
Dr. Hugh Nibley, who is supposed to be the Mormon Church’s top authority of the Egyptian language, warned his people that there was trouble ahead. On December 1, 1967, the Daily Universe, published at the Brigham Young University, reported this statement by Dr. Nibley:
“The papyri scripts given to the Church do not prove the Book of Abraham is true,” Dr. Hugh Nibley said in an Academics Office-sponsored assembly Wednesday night. “LDS scholars are caught flat footed by this discovery,” he went on to say. (Daily Universe, Brigham Young University, December 1, 1967)
[Bold in quotations is added for emphasis and does not appear in originals.]
In an article published in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Dr. Nibley stated:
When I first saw photos of the papyri I made myself disagreeable by throwing a great deal of cold water around. For publicity they were great, and as far as I can see their main value is still in calling the attention of Latter-day Saints to the existence of scriptures which they have studiously ignored through the years. (Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Summer 1968, page 102)
A Devastating Blow
While Dr. Nibley and a few others may have realized that the papyri could not be used to prove Joseph Smith’s work true, they evidently were not aware of the devastating blow that the papyri were about to deal to the “Book of Abraham.” Within six months from the time the Metropolitan Museum gave the papyri to the Church, the Book of Abraham had been proven untrue!
At first the Mormon leaders were only willing to admit that one fragment of the papyri had any direct connection with the Book of Abraham. This was the piece that has the picture found on Facsimile No. 1 in the Pearl of Great Price. The following statement appeared in the Mormon paper, Deseret News: “As far as has yet been determined, the papyri do not contain any of the original material translated as the Book of Abraham itself” (Deseret News: November 28, 1967).
In the Salt Lake City Messenger for March, 1968, we announced that the “piece of papyrus from which Joseph Smith translated the Book of Abraham” had been located among the papyri. We quoted Dr. James R. Clark, of the Brigham Young University, as stating that Joseph Smith’s Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar contained two separate handwritten manuscripts. These manuscripts contain the text of part of the Book of Abraham, and they show the Egyptian characters Joseph Smith used to make this text. In the same Messenger we furnished photographic proof that these characters were taken from the fragment of papyrus which the Improvement Era labeled: “XI. ‘Sensen’ text (unillustrated)” (Improvement Era, February, 1968, page 41). The evidence which we presented could not be refuted, and Dr. Nibley has now had to admit that the “Sensen” text is related to the Book of Abraham. He began breaking the news in the Improvement Era:
. . . the presence on the scene of some of the original papyri, including those used by the prophet in preparing the text of the Book of Abraham and the Facsimiles with their commentaries, has not raised a single new question, though, as we shall see, it has solved some old ones. (Improvement Era, May, 1968, page 54)
Dr. Nibley made this admission in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought:
But after all, what do the papyri tell us? That Joseph Smith had them, that he studied them, and that the smallest and most insignificant-looking of them is connected in some mysterious way to the Pearl of Great Price. (Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Summer, 1968, page 102)
At a meeting held at the University of Utah on May 20, 1968, Dr. Nibley admitted that the “Sensen” fragment seemed to supply the characters for the Book of Abraham:
Within a week of the publication of the papyri students began calling my attention, in fact, within a day or two, I think it was Witorf [?], called my attention to the fact that, the very definite fact that, one of the fragments seemed to supply all of the symbols for the Book of Abraham. This was the little “Sensen” scroll. Here are the symbols. The symbols are arranged here, and the interpretation goes along here and this interpretation turns out to be the Book of Abraham. Well, what about that? Here is the little “Sensen” because that name occurs frequently in it, the papyrus, in which a handful of Egyptian symbols was apparently expanded in translation to the whole Book of Abraham. This raises a lot of questions. It doesn’t answer any questions, unless we’re mindreaders. (Speech given by Hugh Nibley, University of Utah, May 20, 1968)
In the Salt Lake City Messenger for March, 1968, we stated that Grant Heward felt that the piece of papyrus Joseph Smith used as a basis for his “Book of Abraham” was in reality a part of the Egyptian “Book of Breathings.” His identification has now been confirmed. Dee Jay Nelson, a Mormon philologist, who worked independently on the Joseph Smith Papyri, came to exactly the same conclusion. He made this comment concerning this fragment of papyrus:
1. This papyrus is a traditional copy of the Shait en Sensen, Book of Breathings and is of a late origin. It most probably was written in the Ptolemaic Period (after 332 B.C.). (The Joseph Smith Papyri—A Translation and Preliminary Survey of the Ta-shert-Min and Ter Papyri, by Dee Jay Nelson, Salt Lake City, 1968, page 41)
Two of the most prominent Egyptologists in the United States have also confirmed this identification. John A. Wilson, who is Professor of Egyptology at the University of Chicago, made this statement:
Document D is a related mortuary text of late times, the so-called Book of Breathings, in a hieratic hand coarser than that of Document B. (Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Summer, 1968, page 68)
Richard A. Parker also confirmed the fact that what Joseph Smith claimed was the Book of Abraham was in reality the Book of Breathings. The editors of Dialogue stated:
Richard A. Parker is the Wilbour Professor of Egyptology and Chairman of the Department of Egyptology at Brown University. His primary interest is in the later stages of Egyptian language and history. He remarks that the Book of Breathings is a late (Ptolemaic and Roman periods) and greatly reduced version of the Book of the Dead. No comprehensive study of it has yet been undertaken and no manuscript has yet been published adequately. He would provisionally date the two Book of Breathings fragments in the Church’s possession to the last century before or the first century of the Christian era: . . .
(Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Summer, 1968, page 86)
The editors of Dialogue persuaded Dr. Parker to translate “the important ‘sensen’ text.” His translation reads as follows:
1. [. . . .] this great pool of Khonsu
2. [Osiris Hor, justified], born of Taykhebyt, a man likewise.
3. After (his) two arms are [fast]ened to his breast, one wraps the Book of Breathings, which is
4. with writing both inside and outside of it, with royal linen, it being placed (at) his left arm
5. near his heart, this having been done at his
6. wrapping and outside it. If this book be recited for him, then
7. he will breath like the soul[s of the gods] for ever and
8. ever.
(Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Summer, 1968, page 98)
The reader will see that Richard Parker’s translation bears no resemblance to Joseph Smith’s purported translation of the same text. Thus we see that the Book of Abraham has been proven untrue because the original papyrus contains no reference to Abraham or his religion. Richard Parker translates only 83 English words from this text, whereas Joseph Smith’s rendition contained thousands of words.
Dr. Hugh Nibley had a copy of Richard Parker’s translation before it appeared in Dialogue and in a speech delivered May 20, 1968, he stated
. . . Professor Parker has translated that controversial little thing called the “Sensen” papyrus, the little section, that text that matches up with some of the Book of Abraham.
Strange as it may seem, Dr. Nibley admits that Richard Parker is “the best man in America” for this particular text, and that he did a “nice” job:
. . . here is Parker’s translation of the “Sensen” papyrus. . . . Parker being the best man in America for this particular period and style of writing. And Parker agreed to do it and he’s done it. So it’s nice. . . . it will be available within a month. I’m sure, in the next issue of the Dialogue. (Speech by Hugh Nibley, University of Utah, May 20, 1968)
It is now becoming rather obvious that Dr. Nibley is unprepared to deal with the problems related to the translation of the Book of Abraham, and that he has no real answers to give his people. In an article published in Dialogue, he stated:
Since the Sen-Sen business makes very little sense to anybody, while the Book of Abraham makes very good sense, one might suppose that Smith could have produced the latter without any reference to the former—that he could have written the Book of Abraham more easily, in fact, without having to bother himself with those meaningless squiggles. But if the Sen-Sen symbols are expendable, why does he use them at all? His only purpose would have been to impress others, but he keeps the whole operation strictly to himself and never circulates the Sen-Sen papyrus as he did the Facsimiles. And why on earth would he fasten on this particularly ugly little piece and completely bypass the whole collection of handsome illustrated documents at his disposal? Did he really think he was translating? If so he was acting in good faith. But was he really translating? If so, it was by a process which quite escapes the understanding of the specialists and lies in the realm of the imponderable.
No one has begun to look into the Sen-Sen problem seriously, . . .
Today nobody claims that Joseph Smith got his information through ordinary scholarly channels. In that case one wonders how any amount of checking along ordinary scholarly channels is going to get us very far. (Dialogue, Summer, 1968, page 101)
When Dr. Nibley spoke at the University of Utah, May 20, 1968, he admitted that if Joseph Smith was “really translating the papyri” he did it in a way that is unknown to Egyptologists:
By what process could the Book of Abraham have been squeezed out of a few brief signs? Nobody has told us yet. Was Joseph Smith really translating the papyri? If so, it was not in any way known to Egyptology. Was he then merely pretending to translate them? But he never really put these symbols forth as his source. He published the facsimiles, but these always remained among his private papers. These were not for circulation. He’s not pretending to be doing anything here. He’s not seeking to impress anyone at all. Nobody knew about this little work he was carrying on. He never published them as he did the facsimiles. Did he really need these symbols? This is a funny thing. Are they actually the source upon which he depended? Well, if he really depended on them, he must really have been translating them. But, you say, he couldn’t possibly have been translating. Could he have used this as a source at all? These questions arise. If he was merely faking, of course, pretending to be translating them, well, he wouldn’t need the Egyptian text at all. Yet he used one, and he used it secretly. Why would he secretly make use of a text he didn’t need at all? This was just a nuisance, really, all these symbols. Let’s just forget about them and just write the story. Why did he need to tie up with these, and how does he tie up? Why does he ignore the wealth of handsome illustrated texts at his disposal to concentrate only on the shortest and ugliest and most poorly written of the lot? Why did he choose just this particular one when he had all these beautiful manuscripts. And they were all [just as?] meaningless to everybody. Why would he do that? Well, all sorts of questions arise.
Facing Reality
In an article written for the Brigham Young University Studies, Dr. Nibley stated:
It has long been known that the characters “interpreted” by Joseph Smith in his Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar are treated by him as super-cryptograms; and now it is apparent that the source of those characters is the unillustrated fragment on which the word Sen-Sen appears repeatedly. This identifies it as possibly belonging to those writings known as The Book of Breathings, though that in turn is merely “compilations and excerpts from older funerary spells and burial formulas.” (Brigham Young University Studies, Spring, 1968, page 249)
While Dr. Nibley is willing to admit that the “Sensen” text contains the characters Joseph Smith used in his Book of Abraham manuscript and that this text may be from the Book of Breathings, he is not willing to face reality and admit that the Book of Abraham is a forgery. He is willing to admit that the Richard Parker has made a “fine” translation of the “Sensen” fragment, but he is unable to face the implications of this translation. Dr. Nibley has now gone so far as to claim that the “Sensen” text may have a second meaning unknown to Egyptologists:
. . . you very often have texts of double meaning. . . . it’s quite possible, say, that this “Sensen” papyrus, telling a straight forward innocent little story or something like that, should contain also a totally different text concealed within it . . . they [the Egyptians] know what they’re doing, but we don’t. We don’t have the key. (Speech by Dr. Hugh Nibley, University of Utah, May 20, 1968)
In the same meeting Dr. Nibley was asked “if the key to this concentrated language is not had by Egyptologists, do we have any hope of having the Book of Abraham ever translated?” Dr. Nibley replied: “I don’t know. That’s an interesting thing. We don’t know what may turn up in another manuscript, or something like that.”
We feel that Dr. Nibley is guilty of deception when he claims that the Mormon Papyri may have a second meaning unknown to Egyptologists. This is about as ridiculous as claiming that the world is flat in this day of space travel. When Marvin Cowan asked Professor Richard Parker if that papyri could have a second meaning, he replied that he knew of “no Egyptologist who would support such a claim” (Letter from Richard Parker, dated January 9, 1968).
It is becoming very obvious to many people that Dr. Nibley is just stalling. He has no answers to give his people, and he is doing his best to make the issue as confused as possible. In the speech he gave at the University of Utah he made this statement concerning his critics:
. . . why are they in such a hurry for rushing to judgement? What’s all the hurry about? People say I keep dragging my feet; of course I have been dragging [my feet]. There is no hurry here. Professor Atiya says, “Learn to be patient with the Egyptians.”
Evidently, Dr. Nibley wants us to forget about the papyri, and judge the Book of Abraham by its similarity to a number of old apocryphal writings. He states: . . .
it is folly to come out with a verdict about the Book of Abraham until we have studied fully and carefully the great and growing corpus of ancient Abrahamic literature, even if it takes us years to get through it. . . . the Book of Abraham itself is a book of legends about Abraham which can only be tested in the light of other such legends, which can at least give us hints as to whether Joseph Smith was making it all up or not. . . . the Abraham literature is of course a great hodge-podge of stuff coming from many different centuries. But because of the ways in which legends and traditions were swapped around anciently, with very ancient and authentic bits sometimes turning up in the most unlikely places, often buried in bushels of nonsense, we cannot escape the obligation of reading everything. . . . let’s not get ahead of the game, or overlook any possibility that there might be something there after all . . . it is just possible that there are things that might be said in favor of the Book of Abraham. (Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Summer, 1968, pages 102-105)
It appears that Dr. Nibley wants us to ignore the evidence which the “Sensen” fragment furnishes and wait for years while he searches through “bushels of nonsense” and “legends” hoping that he may find something that may be used as evidence for the Book of Abraham. Such a suggestion is absurd. What better evidence could there be than that furnished by the original text? To ignore this evidence is to ignore the truth entirely. The evidence is very clear. The Book of Abraham is a spurious translation. It has no historical basis, and it is plain that it is a work of Joseph Smith’s imagination! Truth now demands that the Mormon people repudiate this book and the anti-Negro doctrine that is contained in its pages.
Originally appeared in: