Book of Abraham

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the original facsimile with Joseph's writing in the lacunae
the original facsimile with Joseph's writing in the lacunae
The Book of Abraham is the second book in The Pearl of Great Price. The book is comprised of five chapters and three facsimiles.

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Multimedia

Non-Mormon

Mormon

  • The Facsimilies (MP3) (from the Pearl of Great Price Series on BYU Broadcasting)

Contents

History

Joseph Smith bought the papyrus from a traveling salesman while he was in Kirtland, OH in 1835. Smith claimed that the Egyptian document was an original autograph that Abraham had written upon.

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Recovery of the papyri

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LDS views on the translation

Most Mormons tend to believe that Joseph Smith translated the Book of Abraham from the Egyptian papyri sold to Smith by Michael Chandler. They believe it was the same papyri that has been recovered today. Mormon apologists, however, take a different view:

"From the evidence that we have today, it’s quite safe to say that Joseph Smith did not have the Book of Abraham or the Book of Joseph in front of him in the form of these papyri because they bear no relationship to the contents of the stories or to his translation." -Lanny Bell [1]

That is, apologists do not believe that the "extant papyri making up the Book of Breathings must be the original text of the Book of Abraham". [2] "[It] is doubtful that the Book of Abraham was translated from the Joseph Smith papyri that has been recovered." [3] One Mormon blogger puts it like this: "[T]here is a enormous gulf between what ordinary members believe about the BoA and the reality that the papyri force us to consider." [1]

A minority take the position that Joseph Smith possessed the scrolls and used them as inspiration, rather than a direct source of content. "Joseph used the papyri as a springboard for his revelation." [4]

". . . the discovery [of the Egyptian papyri in 1967] prompted a reassessment of the Book of Abraham. What was going on while Joseph "translated" the papyri and dictated text to a scribe? Obviously, he was not interpreting the hieroglyphics like an ordinary scholar. As Joseph saw it, he was working by inspiration—that had been clear from the beginning. When he "translated" the Book of Mormon, he did not read from the gold plates; he looked into the crystals of the Urim and Thummim or gazed at the seerstone. The words came by inspiration, not by reading the characters on the plates. By analogy, it seemed likely that the papyri had been an occasion for receiving a revelation rather than a word-for-word interpretation of the hieroglyphs as in ordinary translations. Joseph translated Abraham as he had the characters on the gold plates, by knowing the meaning without actually knowing the plates' language" (Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling, p. 192).

Criticisms

  • "Within a series of documents written by Joseph Smith's scribes, the 'Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar', also known as the "Kirtland Egyptian Papers", some manuscripts support the notion that the Book of Abraham was wrongly translated from extant papyrus." [5]
  • There is a minute probability that the Egyptians would include writings from another religion in a funeral scroll.
  • The Hebrews hated the Egyptians, and it seems odd that they would let such a sacred writing be lost from their own possession, only to end up in the hands of the Egyptians.
  • The theology of the Book of Abraham contradicts the creation account and monotheism of the Bible.
  • It seems obvious that Smith improvised facsimile no. 1 in the exact places where it is missing as we have it today.
  • The date of the papyrus seems much later than the lifetime of Abraham. [Citation needed]

Quotes

  • "Facsimile 1 is in fact a vignette from a late Egyptian funerary text showing a priest enbalming the body of a deceased person. The 'bird' is the spirit, or 'ba' of the dead man; the jars beneath the couch are the 'canopic jars' that held the organs. This is not some anti-Mormon fantasy, but the sober interpretation of professional Egyptologists. There is no getting away from it." -LDS Blogger [6]
  • There’s certainly no reason that this particular book of breathing scroll should be expanded much beyond the surviving length. I’ve now read the entire document from the beginning to end and made out what one could make out on the poor copy of the final vignette. The most that is missing from this text is simply two columns worth of Egyptian hieratic. And possibly a small vignette. But other than that, there would be nothing more that would inflate its length much beyond its current size. It is both unprecedented and unreasonable to assume that an intrusive text about a completely different matter—a narrative history of Abraham and his descendents— would have been inserted into a document whose beginning, middle and end is devoted specifically to the resurrection of an Egyptian priest." -Robert Ritner (Egyptologist)
  • "The faith and worthiness of this young man, Joseph Smith, enabled him not only to find the gold plates, but later to translate the hieroglyphic record by the power of God. What a thrill it was to see some of the reformed Egyptian characters as copied by the hand of Joseph Smith." [7]
  • "In addition to the Old Testament, this course includes the books of Moses and Abraham from the Pearl of Great Price. These books provide important additions and clarifications to some of the material in the book of Genesis. The book of Moses is an extract from the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible. The book of Abraham is a translation that the Prophet Joseph Smith made from some Egyptian papyri." - Gospel Doctrine Teacher's Manual

See also

References

  1. ↑ Comment by a Mormon named "Ronan" at "By Common Consent". Accessed 8/22/2006. URL: http://www.bycommonconsent.com/2006/08/poll-the-abraham-problem/

External links

Non-Mormon

Mormon

Ensign articles

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