Common Book of Abraham Criticisms

The Major Criticisms, Their Origins, and the LDS Responses

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The Book of Abraham is unusually open to historical testing because Joseph Smith tied it to a physical object. He did not present it only as a revelation about Abraham. The published heading calls it “A Translation of some ancient Records” that came into his hands and says those records were written “upon papyrus.” The modern edition states it even more plainly: “Translated from the Papyrus, by Joseph Smith.”^[1]

That claim became testable after fragments of Joseph Smith’s Egyptian collection resurfaced in 1967. Egyptologists identified the surviving pieces as Egyptian funerary texts, including a Book of Breathings belonging to a man named Hôr. They do not contain the Book of Abraham. The Church now acknowledges that Mormon and non-Mormon Egyptologists agree that the surviving characters do not match the Book of Abraham translation.^[2]^[3]^[14]^[34]^[36] Some papyri are missing, so the surviving fragments do not tell us what every lost piece contained. But the material we do have creates a direct evidentiary problem for a straightforward claim that Joseph translated Abraham’s writings from Egyptian papyrus.

The Church states the central translation problem plainly:

“Latter-day Saint and non-Latter-day Saint Egyptologists agree that the characters on the fragments do not match the translation given in the book of Abraham”— The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Translation and Historicity of the Book of Abraham ^[3]

Egyptologist Robert Ritner described the surviving Hôr text in conventional Egyptological terms:

“The true content of this papyrus concerns only the afterlife of the deceased Egyptian priest Hor.”— Robert K. Ritner, The “Breathing Permit of Hôr” Thirty-Four Years Later ^[14]

Not every criticism carries the same weight. Some papyri are missing, broad ancient parallels can be real, and nineteenth-century similarities do not automatically prove borrowing. But those limits do not erase the central evidence. The surviving papyri, the translation manuscripts, the Egyptian-language documents, and the facsimiles can all be compared with Joseph Smith’s own claims.

The case is cumulative rather than dependent on one criticism. Joseph said he was translating ancient Egyptian records connected with Abraham. The surviving evidence repeatedly fails to support that description. The papyri are funerary texts, the Egyptian-language project does not decipher Egyptian, and the published facsimiles contain identifiable figures and inscriptions that do not match Joseph’s explanations.

Book-Wide and Translation Problems

What Joseph Smith said he was translating

The basic criticism starts with Joseph Smith’s own description of the project. In 1835, traveling exhibitor Michael Chandler brought four Egyptian mummies and a collection of papyri to Kirtland, Ohio. Joseph and several associates examined the material, and members of the Church purchased the collection. Joseph’s history says that after he began “the translation of some of the characters or hieroglyphics,” he found that one of the rolls contained “the writings of Abraham.”^[2] Work on the project continued in 1835 and resumed before publication in Nauvoo in 1842.^[2]^[32]

The problem is therefore historical, not merely theological. Joseph connected the Book of Abraham to identifiable Egyptian documents and repeatedly used the language of translation, characters, hieroglyphics, papyrus, and ancient records.^[1]^[2]^[32]^[35]^[38] Those claims can be compared with the surviving Egyptian material.

The main LDS response is that Joseph may have used “translation” more broadly than a modern translator would. The Church leaves open a catalyst model in which the papyri prompted revelation without containing the English text word for word.^[3] That can preserve a belief in revelation, but it does not show that Joseph correctly translated the Egyptian documents he said were connected with Abraham.

The catalyst defense resolves the mismatch by moving the Book of Abraham away from the ordinary meaning of translation. The more independent the revelation becomes from the Egyptian text, the less the papyri support Joseph’s claim that he had found and translated Abraham’s writings.

For wider context on how the Book of Abraham fits into Joseph Smith’s developing scripture and theology, Lucifer’s Lantern’s documentary history of Mormonism follows the project alongside his other translation and revelatory work.^[31]

“No known first-person account from Joseph Smith exists to explain the translation of the Book of Abraham”— Stephen O. Smoot, John Gee, Kerry Muhlestein, and John S. Thompson, How Did Joseph Smith Translate the Book of Abraham? ^[45]

What the surviving Joseph Smith Papyri actually contain

The rediscovered fragments contain portions of Egyptian funerary texts, not a narrative by the biblical Abraham. The most important piece for the controversy is the papyrus associated with Hôr, which contains a version of the Book of Breathings, a funerary composition intended to assist the deceased in the afterlife.^[4]^[5] Facsimile 1 came from the opening vignette associated with this material.^[4]

Not all of Joseph’s papyri survive. Contemporary witnesses described more material than is known today.^[4]^[11] That leaves open the possibility that a lost section contained something different. It does not change what the surviving pieces are: Egyptian funerary texts, not a narrative written by Abraham.

The claim that can be established from the surviving papyri is more limited: the surviving Egyptian text does not translate into the Book of Abraham. Klaus Baer’s 1968 translation of the Hôr material, later followed and refined by other Egyptologists, identified it as a funerary document. The same conclusion is central to later critical Egyptological treatments by Robert K. Ritner and Stephen E. Thompson.^[3]^[5]^[14]^[34]

The missing material is the basis of one major LDS defense: perhaps the Book of Abraham came from a lost section rather than from the surviving fragments.^[3]^[11]^[12] The problem is that the surviving translation documents repeatedly connect the Book of Abraham project to material that still exists.

The age of the papyri and “Abraham’s own hand”

The age of the surviving papyri creates a separate problem from their contents. Robert Ritner dates the Hôr Book of Breathings to the Ptolemaic period, possibly the first half of the second century BC. Stephen E. Thompson likewise places the material in the late Egyptian period, many centuries after any normal historical setting proposed for Abraham.^[14]^[34]

The Book of Abraham, however, was published as the writings of Abraham, “written by his own hand, upon papyrus.”^[1] If that description refers to the physical document Joseph possessed, the dating is impossible. A Ptolemaic papyrus could not have been physically written by a patriarch who, if historical, would have lived more than a millennium earlier.

This was not only a later misunderstanding by readers. Milan D. Smith Jr. drew attention to Josiah Quincy’s 1844 account of Joseph showing visitors the papyri and identifying one specimen as “the handwriting of Abraham.” Quincy also reported Joseph identifying other ancient handwriting in the collection.^[38] The account was written later, so it should not carry the same weight as a contemporary journal entry, but it fits Joseph’s repeated treatment of the papyri as actual ancient writings he was examining and translating.

A common LDS response is that “written by his own hand” can mean authorship rather than the physical autograph, or that the heading was a nineteenth-century description rather than part of the ancient text. Either reading avoids requiring Abraham himself to have held the surviving papyrus. But it also gives up the simplest reading of the heading and does not explain Joseph’s reported identification of the papyrus as Abraham’s handwriting.^[38]

The dating problem is therefore broader than a phrase in the heading. The surviving document is a late Egyptian funerary text made for Hôr. Its date, owner, language, and purpose can all be identified, and none points to a manuscript physically produced by Abraham.^[14]^[34]^[43]^[44]

The missing-papyrus theory

A substantial portion of Joseph Smith’s papyrus collection is missing. That fact is not controversial. The fragments returned to the Church in 1967 were not the entire collection purchased in 1835, and eyewitnesses described rolls and pieces that cannot now be identified among the surviving material.^[4]^[11]

LDS scholars emphasize that limitation in the surviving collection:

“It is possible, and indeed likely, that Joseph Smith possessed more papyri than have survived.”— John Gee, What Egyptian Papyri Did Joseph Smith Possess? ^[11]

The missing-papyrus theory proposes that the Book of Abraham was translated from one of those lost sections. If true, the fact that the surviving fragments contain a Book of Breathings would not matter much. Joseph could have possessed a separate Abraham text that was later destroyed or lost.

Two pieces of evidence work against a simple missing-scroll solution. First, surviving Book of Abraham manuscripts place characters copied from the Hôr papyrus beside English Book of Abraham text.^[6]^[8]^[9]^[35]^[36] Second, Facsimile 1 came from the Hôr material, and Abraham 1:12 and 1:14 point readers to that image as part of Abraham’s story.^[1]^[4] The Book of Abraham project was therefore tied to papyrus that survives and can now be read.

The length of the Hôr scroll has also become part of the argument. Several reconstructions based on the physical papyrus and the spacing of surviving fragments estimate an original length in the neighborhood of roughly 1.5 meters, leaving a limited amount of missing material. John Gee, an LDS Egyptologist, has argued that the original roll could have been much longer. The Joseph Smith Papers presents the competing estimates rather than declaring the matter closed.^[4]^[10]

Scroll length does not settle what every lost papyrus contained. It does matter for the theory that a long Abraham text once continued on the Hôr roll. Physical reconstructions leave far less missing space than a long lost Abraham text would require, which directly limits that version of the missing-scroll defense.^[10]^[35]

The missing papyri keep a lost Abraham text possible, but there is no surviving Egyptian evidence that such a text existed. What does survive points in the other direction: the Book of Abraham manuscripts and Facsimile 1 connect the project to the Hôr material, which is a funerary text.^[10]^[35]^[36]

“we found that his measurements did not seem to be accurate and, in fact, required the papyrus to be impossibly thin”— Andrew W. Cook and Christopher C. Smith, The Original Length of the Scroll of Hôr ^[10]

The Book of Abraham translation manuscripts

The translation manuscripts directly connect Book of Abraham English with Egyptian characters, so they deserve separate treatment.

Several 1835 manuscripts contain English text from the opening chapters of the Book of Abraham with Egyptian characters written in the left margin. Those characters are not random decorations. They were copied from the papyri, including the Hôr material, and appear in the same broader Egyptian-language project being undertaken by Joseph Smith and his associates.^[6]^[8]^[9]

The manuscripts create a direct test of the proposed relationship. Egyptian characters copied from the papyri appear beside blocks of Book of Abraham English. That strongly suggests that the people making these manuscripts were connecting those characters with that English text. But the actual Egyptian characters do not contain those long passages about Abraham.^[5]^[8]^[9]^[35]^[36]

This became directly testable after the papyri were recovered because the source characters could be identified. A tiny Egyptian sign that has a normal, limited linguistic function cannot conventionally translate into a long paragraph about Abraham.^[14]^[35]^[36]

LDS scholars argue that these manuscripts may have been created after the English text was already revealed, with scribes later trying to match the text to Egyptian characters.^[6]^[7]^[12] The surviving manuscripts do not let us reconstruct every step of the process. Still, that explanation has to account for why Joseph’s circle repeatedly paired the Abraham text with characters from papyri that do not say what the English says.

The manuscripts may not prove that Joseph dictated one paragraph from one glyph in a single step. They do show something more limited but directly observable: the Book of Abraham text was being deliberately tied to Egyptian characters that can now be read and that do not carry the meanings assigned to them.^[35]^[36]

“there is some kind of relationship between these two groups, though the nature of that relationship is not entirely clear”— Stephen O. Smoot, John Gee, Kerry Muhlestein, and John S. Thompson, The “Kirtland Egyptian Papers” and the Book of Abraham ^[46]

The Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar

The “Kirtland Egyptian Papers” is a modern umbrella term for several documents created during Joseph Smith’s Egyptian studies. Among them are alphabet documents, notebooks of copied Egyptian characters, Book of Abraham manuscripts, and a bound work usually called the Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language, or GAEL.^[6]^[7]

The important point is simple. These documents show Joseph Smith and his associates assigning meanings to Egyptian characters. The GAEL sorts characters into categories and “degrees” and gives them increasingly long English explanations. Many of the same characters appear in the Book of Abraham manuscripts.^[7]

Professional Egyptology does not validate this system as a decipherment of Egyptian. The meanings assigned in the GAEL do not correspond to the actual linguistic values of the characters.^[5]^[7]^[14]^[35]^[36]

Not every line of the GAEL can be shown to come directly from Joseph Smith. William W. Phelps and other scribes helped produce the material.^[6]^[7] But Joseph was involved in the project, and the system created around him does not work as Egyptian.

Joseph’s own journal records work on an Egyptian alphabet, and his history says he was arranging an Egyptian grammar while working with the papyri.^[2]^[7] The problem is not whether he personally wrote every line. The problem is that an Egyptian-language project carried out under his direction assigns incorrect meanings to Egyptian characters and is closely tied to the Book of Abraham.^[35]^[36]

“the original and the translation show no relationship to each other”— Karl C. Sandberg, Knowing Brother Joseph Again ^[37]

Does the evidence show character-by-character translation?

The evidence does not prove a perfectly mechanical one-character-at-a-time process, but it does show that characters and English passages were being deliberately matched.

The manuscripts do provide evidence that Egyptian characters were being associated with blocks of English Book of Abraham text. The GAEL provides evidence that participants in the project believed individual characters could contain very expansive meanings.^[7]^[8]^[9] Together, those documents look much more like an attempted relationship between Egyptian signs and English meaning than a pure revelation that happened to occur in the same room as some papyri.

The manuscripts do not prove exactly when each English sentence was first dictated.^[6]^[12] That uncertainty matters for reconstructing the process, but it does not change the result: the characters were given meanings they do not have in Egyptian.

That distinction does not make the criticism disappear. It narrows it to what can actually be shown: Joseph’s circle created a system that linked the papyri’s characters with the Book of Abraham, and that system does not work as Egyptian. An apologetic model can argue that the system was secondary to revelation. It cannot reasonably present the GAEL as a successful conventional translation method.^[35]^[36]

Catalyst and revelatory models

The catalyst theory says the papyri prompted Joseph Smith to receive the Book of Abraham by revelation even though the Egyptian words did not contain the English text.^[3]^[12] This avoids requiring the papyri to translate into the Book of Abraham.

The Church’s essay leaves room for this kind of revelatory process.^[3] This model departs from how Joseph and his associates usually described the project. They spoke of ancient records, papyrus, characters, and translation.

Joseph did not present the Book of Abraham as a revelation that merely happened to be inspired by Egyptian artifacts. The title, his history, and the publication record connect it to ancient records, papyrus, characters, and translation.^[1]^[2]^[32]^[35]^[37]^[38] A catalyst theory can preserve revelation, but it does so by moving away from the plain historical claim that Joseph translated an Abrahamic Egyptian text.

Egyptology cannot test whether God privately revealed a text to Joseph Smith. It can test whether the Egyptian documents Joseph connected with Abraham actually contain his translation. The surviving evidence says they do not.^[14]^[35]

“Whichever theory one chooses to follow, one must be prepared to deal with the problems posed by the evidence that the theory cannot account for”— Stephen O. Smoot, John Gee, Kerry Muhlestein, and John S. Thompson, BYU Studies ^[12]

The Facsimiles

Why the facsimiles matter

The three facsimiles are different from the missing-papyrus problem because Joseph published the images themselves. We do not have to guess what document he was discussing. His explanations identify specific figures and, in Facsimile 3, explicitly say that some names are written in the Egyptian characters visible in the image.^[13]^[16]^[18]

That made the facsimiles the earliest part of the Book of Abraham that Egyptologists could evaluate even before the papyri resurfaced. In 1860, French Egyptologist Théodule Devéria examined the published facsimiles for Jules Rémy and concluded that they were Egyptian funerary material, not scenes of Abraham. Rémy printed Devéria’s analysis in French that year and in English translation in 1861.^[20] In 1912, Episcopal bishop Franklin S. Spalding circulated the facsimiles to a group of Egyptologists and published their responses, renewing the controversy.^[33]

Some details in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Egyptological work are dated. The central problem is not. Later scholars still identify the figures and texts as ordinary Egyptian funerary material involving Osiris, Isis, Maat, Anubis, Hôr, and a hypocephalus.^[5]^[14]^[34]

“totally unacquainted with the significance of these documents and absolutely ignorant of the simplest facts of Egyptian writing and civilization”— James H. Breasted, quoted in Franklin S. Spalding, Joseph Smith, Jr., As a Translator ^[33]

Facsimile 1: Abraham on the altar

Facsimile 1 depicts a reclining human figure on a lion-shaped couch with a standing figure leaning over him. Four canopic figures appear below. Joseph Smith’s explanation identifies the reclining person as “Abraham fastened upon an altar,” the standing figure as “the idolatrous priest of Elkenah attempting to offer up Abraham as a sacrifice,” and the lion couch as an altar. He also identifies an angel, four idolatrous gods, and other elements of the scene.^[13] Abraham 1:12 and 1:14 explicitly refer readers to the image while describing an attempted sacrifice.^[1]

Egyptologists identify the surviving vignette as part of the funerary material belonging to Hôr. The reclining figure is Hôr, and the scene belongs to the family of Egyptian lion-couch or embalming/resurrection imagery. The standing figure is normally identified with Anubis or an embalming officiant associated with him.^[4]^[5]

That is the core criticism. Joseph published a specific historical narrative for a known Egyptian funerary image, and the Egyptian context does not identify the figures as Abraham and a priest of Elkenah.^[14]^[34]^[42]

The claim that Egyptians never practiced any form of human sacrifice or ritual killing is too broad. Egyptian evidence includes executions and ritualized killing traditions.^[15] That does little to help Joseph’s explanation, however, because the question is what this particular image depicts.

Nothing in the Egyptian text or known identity of the scene names Abraham, Elkenah, or an attempted sacrifice. The image belongs to Hôr’s funerary material. General evidence that Egyptians sometimes killed people in ritual or state settings does not change that.

The damaged portions create another criticism. Thompson argues that the published restoration added features that do not fit the original funerary scene, including the knife placed in the standing figure’s hand.^[34] The surviving papyrus is damaged in exactly the area where the head and hand would have appeared, so the reconstruction cannot simply be read as original Egyptian evidence.

Other details in Joseph’s explanation are also wrong in ordinary Egyptological terms. Thompson identifies Figure 11, which Joseph called the “pillars of heaven,” as a palace façade or serekh. Figure 12, which Joseph connected with the Hebrew firmament and “the heavens,” is a set of water lines beneath the crocodile.^[34] These are not minor disagreements about symbolism. They show Joseph assigning non-Egyptian meanings to recognizable Egyptian artistic elements.

There are debates over the exact original head and hand of the standing figure and over the range of lion-couch symbolism. Those uncertainties matter when reconstructing the damaged drawing. They do not supply Egyptian evidence for Abraham, Elkenah, or an attempted sacrifice, and they do not explain the incorrect readings of the undamaged elements.^[14]^[34]^[42]

“the story presented in the Book of Abraham matches remarkably well with the picture of ritual slaying”— Stephen O. Smoot, John Gee, Kerry Muhlestein, and John S. Thompson, Human Sacrifice ^[15]

Facsimile 1 directly challenges Joseph’s specific explanation, but Facsimile 3 provides a more controlled translation test because Facsimile 1 is damaged and funerary iconography can carry several layers of symbolism.

Facsimile 2: the hypocephalus

Facsimile 2 is a circular Egyptian object of a type known as a hypocephalus. Hypocephali were placed with the dead and contain religious imagery and texts connected with heat, light, regeneration, and the deceased’s relationship to Egyptian deities.^[16]^[17]

Joseph Smith’s published explanation gives the figures a very different set of meanings. Figure 1 is Kolob, “the first creation, nearest to the celestial, or the residence of God.” Figure 2 is Oliblish, another governing creation. Figure 3 represents God sitting on his throne. Figure 4 is tied to the Hebrew word “Raukeeyang” and a numerical reckoning of time. Other figures are connected to the four quarters of the earth, angelic powers, and information Joseph said was “not to be revealed” at that time.^[16]

The criticism has two parts.

First, Egyptologists do not read the surviving Egyptian inscriptions as statements about Kolob, Oliblish, Abraham’s astronomy, or the hierarchy Joseph describes. The object is recognizable as an Egyptian funerary hypocephalus.^[14]^[17]^[34]

Second, the original hypocephalus was damaged. When Facsimile 2 was prepared for publication, missing sections were filled with material copied from other Egyptian documents in Joseph’s collection. The restoration is visible in the surviving historical materials.^[17]

The important point is not whether Joseph personally intended to deceive anyone when the damaged image was restored. The important point is that parts of the published Facsimile 2 were filled with material copied from other papyri. Those added sections were not part of the original hypocephalus and cannot support Joseph’s interpretation as ancient evidence.^[34]^[36]^[42]

Several of Joseph’s individual explanations can also be tested. He identifies Figure 5 as “Enish-go-on-dosh” and says the Egyptians called it the sun. Thompson identifies the figure as a celestial cow goddess associated with the sun god but not as the sun itself. In Egyptian religion the sun deity is male.^[34]

Joseph says Figure 4 answers to the Hebrew firmament and is “also a numerical figure, in Egyptian signifying one thousand.” Thompson reviews the Egyptological arguments used to defend that reading and concludes that there is no evidence that this figure, or an Egyptian ship generally, functioned as the number 1,000. An often-cited “ship of 1000” parallel rests on a translation that later Egyptologists read instead as a ship with lotus blossoms at its ends.^[34]

Figure 6 is another example. Joseph says the four sons of Horus represent “this earth in its four quarters.” The sons of Horus were sometimes associated with cardinal directions in a royal coronation setting, but Thompson notes that this is not their meaning in the funerary setting of a hypocephalus. A parallel from a different ritual context does not establish Joseph’s explanation of this image.^[34]

The result is a pattern. Broad themes such as heaven, divine power, directions, and the sun can be found somewhere in Egyptian religion, but Joseph’s specific identifications repeatedly fail when the figures are read in their actual funerary context.^[14]^[34]^[42]

No mainstream Egyptological reading produces Kolob, Oliblish, Joseph’s time calculations, or his other specific explanations from the text.^[14]^[34] Broad cosmic similarities do not solve that problem.

“Joseph Smith is right again describing these figures as representing ‘this earth in its four quarters.’”— Michael D. Rhodes, quoted by FAIR Latter-day Saints ^[17]

Facsimile 3: Abraham before Pharaoh

Facsimile 3 poses the most direct challenge to an ordinary-translation model because its inscriptions are readable and Joseph explicitly appealed to them to identify the figures.

Joseph’s explanation says Figure 1 is “Abraham sitting upon Pharaoh’s throne.” Figure 2 is “King Pharaoh, whose name is given in the characters above his head.” Figure 4 is the “Prince of Pharaoh, King of Egypt, as written above the hand.” Figure 5 is “Shulem, one of the king’s principal waiters, as represented by the characters above his hand.” Figure 6 is “Olimlah, a slave belonging to the prince.”^[18]

Unlike a damaged symbolic image where figures might be reinterpreted in different ways, Facsimile 3 contains readable Egyptian labels. Egyptologists identify the enthroned figure as Osiris, the female figure behind him as Isis, Figure 4 as the goddess Maat, Figure 5 as the deceased Hôr, and Figure 6 as Anubis. The inscription associated with Hôr names him, and the lower text contains a funerary invocation for him.^[5]^[14]^[34]

This directly tests Joseph’s claim that the identities are written in the characters. The characters over Figure 2 do not give the name of Pharaoh. They identify Isis. The characters associated with Figure 4 do not identify a prince. They identify Maat. The characters associated with Figure 5 do not say Shulem. They identify Hôr.^[5]^[18]

Some LDS scholars argue that Facsimile 3 is better described as a presentation scene than a standard judgment scene, or that an Egyptian image could have been given a secondary Abrahamic meaning.^[19] Those proposals do not change the readable labels.

One recent BYU Studies treatment makes the narrower apologetic argument:

“the type of scene with which Facsimile No. 3 compares best is that of the Presentation scene”— Stephen O. Smoot, John Gee, Kerry Muhlestein, and John S. Thompson, BYU Studies ^[19]

The labels remain the central problem. Joseph said the characters identified Pharaoh, a prince, and Shulem. They do not. They identify Egyptian figures including Isis, Maat, and Hôr.^[14]^[33]^[34]^[42] Because Joseph specifically appealed to the written characters, Facsimile 3 provides unusually direct evidence that his explanation was not an Egyptian translation.

For that reason, Facsimile 3 provides a more direct test than the often-repeated argument that “the papyri are just funerary texts.” Missing material can always be proposed for a lost text. Facsimile 3 is present, published, legible, and accompanied by Joseph’s own figure-by-figure claims.

Did Joseph get any facsimile identifications right?

It depends on what counts as “right.”

A few broad themes overlap with Joseph’s explanations. Facsimile 2 is a cosmic religious object, and the four sons of Horus can be associated with regions or directions of the earth.^[15]^[17] Lion-couch scenes also involve death, restoration, and divine power. These similarities are broad enough that they do not recover Joseph’s specific names, stories, or translations.

At the level of specific Egyptological translation, the proposed correspondences largely disappear. Joseph’s named characters, divine names, personal identities, and sentences are not recovered by mainstream readings of the Egyptian. Facsimile 3 is especially direct because some of his claims explicitly appeal to labels that can now be read.^[5]^[18]

Stephen E. Thompson summarized the critical Egyptological position:

“non-Mormon Egyptologists who have commented on Joseph Smith’s interpretation of the facsimiles uniformly agree that his interpretations are not correct”— Stephen E. Thompson, Egyptology and the Book of Abraham ^[34]

The important test is specificity. No mainstream Egyptological translation reproduces Joseph’s Abraham, Pharaoh, Shulem, Kolob, Oliblish, or other distinctive readings of the facsimiles.^[14]^[33]^[34]^[42]

Abraham in Egyptian and late antique texts

Abraham’s name does appear in some much later texts from the wider Egyptian world.

Greek and Demotic magical papyri from the Greco-Roman and late antique periods sometimes invoke Abraham alongside Egyptian and other religious figures.^[30] That shows that Abraham could appear in an Egyptian religious setting centuries later. It does not show that Joseph’s Hôr papyrus contains Abraham.

But chronology and context matter. These magical texts come from a world in which Jewish, Christian, Greek, and Egyptian traditions had been interacting for centuries. They do not show that the Hôr papyrus contains Abraham, that Joseph translated its characters correctly, or that an Egyptian document from Abraham’s supposed lifetime contained the Book of Abraham.^[41]

The parallel is real but limited. It shows that Abraham could enter Egyptian religious and magical traditions. It does not authenticate Joseph Smith’s papyri.

“a group of priests from Thebes possessed, read, understood, and employed biblical and extrabiblical texts, most especially texts about Abraham and Moses”— Stephen O. Smoot, John Gee, Kerry Muhlestein, and John S. Thompson, The Ancient Egyptian View of Abraham ^[30]

Reading the Criticisms through the Text

Abraham 1: Ur, Chaldeans, sacrifice, and Olishem

Abraham 1 opens with Abraham living among “the Chaldeans” and describes his father’s idolatry, an attempted sacrifice by a priest, and his deliverance by an angel. The scene is tied directly to Facsimile 1. The chapter also places Potiphar’s Hill near the “plain of Olishem.”^[1]

The facsimile problem has already been covered. The remaining historical questions are geography and chronology.

“Ur of the Chaldees” already appears in Genesis, so it was not information Joseph Smith needed the papyri to discover. The word “Chaldean” creates a chronological problem if the text is read as Abraham’s own Bronze Age wording because Chaldeans are securely attested much later.^[34] A later editor could have updated the place name, but that makes the text less like a direct translation of Abraham’s own writing.

LDS researchers have proposed that “Olishem” may resemble the ancient place-name Ulisum or Ulishum in northern Mesopotamia or Syria, sometimes linked with Oylum Höyük.^[22] The resemblance is interesting, but it remains a proposal.

Pearl of Great Price Central describes the proposed identification this way:

“Among the points discussed by Lundquist was the plausible identification of Olishem with the ancient place name Ulisum (or Ulishum).”— Pearl of Great Price Central, The Plain of Olishem ^[22]

No inscription at Oylum Höyük identifies the site as the Book of Abraham’s Olishem, and the proposal also depends on a disputed northern location for Abraham’s Ur. Olishem has not been independently identified, so it cannot currently verify Abraham 1.^[34]

Thompson identifies several additional names as anachronistic if the book is read as Abraham’s own record. “Pharaoh” did not become a title for the Egyptian king until long after the usual period assigned to Abraham, yet Abraham 1 sometimes treats Pharaoh not merely as a title but as the name of the first ruler of Egypt. Joseph’s explanation of Facsimile 3 similarly says that “King Pharaoh” is named in the characters.^[34]

“Potiphar’s Hill” creates a similar problem. Thompson notes that Egyptian names of the Potiphar type are not attested until roughly the first millennium BC, again later than the conventional patriarchal period. “Egyptus” is even more difficult. Abraham 1 says Egyptus is a Chaldean term meaning Egypt and “that which is forbidden,” but Egyptus is Greek in form and does not mean “forbidden.”^[34]

Taken together, Chaldea, Pharaoh, Potiphar, Egyptus, and the first-person reference to a Ptolemaic funerary vignette create a cluster of chronological problems. Any one term might be explained as a later editorial update or a loose translation equivalent. The more such explanations are required, however, the harder it becomes to describe the English Book of Abraham as a direct rendering of a text written by Abraham himself.^[34]

Egyptian religion in Chaldea

Abraham 1 does not merely place Abraham in Chaldea. It describes Egyptian-style worship there. Priests connected with Pharaoh offer children and other victims to gods, three women are killed for refusing to worship images, and the priest attempts to sacrifice Abraham “after the manner of the Egyptians.”^[1]

Thompson argues that this picture does not fit what is known about Egyptian influence in Mesopotamia or northern Syria. Egypt never exercised the kind of cultural control over southern Mesopotamia that the story would require. Even in Syria-Palestine, where Egyptian political power was much stronger during the New Kingdom, Egyptian policy generally did not involve forcing local populations to abandon their gods for Egyptian ones.^[34]

The problem becomes sharper because the story requires more than occasional Egyptian influence. It imagines a local religious system centered on Pharaoh and Egyptian practice, backed by lethal persecution of people who refuse to participate. Thompson notes that Egyptian religion in Asian territories usually worked in the opposite direction: Egyptians often adopted local deities, while official Egyptian cults had limited appeal among the local population.^[34]

This does not prove that no Egyptian religious idea could ever have reached Abraham’s region. Trade, migration, and cultural contact certainly moved religious ideas across borders. The criticism is about scale and behavior. The Book of Abraham describes an Egyptianized sacrificial system in a place where the historical evidence does not show one.^[34]

Abraham 1 and the priesthood lineage

Abraham 1:21-27 traces Pharaoh through Ham and Egyptus. It describes a lineage “by which he could not have the right of Priesthood” and says that a “race” preserved a curse in the land.^[1]

Because later Latter-day Saint leaders barred Black members of African descent from priesthood ordination and temple ordinances, critics often read these verses as part of the scriptural framework later used to defend the ban.^[40]

Abraham 1 does not contain the later priesthood ban in its full form. It does, however, connect an Egyptian lineage with a curse and with lacking the right to priesthood.^[1]^[29] That language later gave Latter-day Saint writers a scriptural foundation they could expand into a racial restriction.

The historical record is clearest when the later racial restriction is separated from what Abraham 1 itself says. Joseph Smith ordained at least some Black men to priesthood offices. The broad racial priesthood restriction was publicly announced under Brigham Young in 1852. Over time, LDS writers combined ideas from Genesis, the Book of Moses, and Abraham 1 into increasingly elaborate racial explanations. After the Pearl of Great Price was canonized in 1880, Abraham 1 became an especially useful proof text for the restriction.^[28]^[29]

The Church now disavows theories that Black skin is a sign of divine disfavor or curse and rejects past racial explanations for the restriction.^[28]

The Church’s current position is explicit:

“Today, the Church disavows the theories advanced in the past that black skin is a sign of divine disfavor or curse”— The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Race and the Priesthood ^[28]

“nowhere does the text of the Book of Abraham support that interpretation”— Stephen O. Smoot, John Gee, Kerry Muhlestein, and John S. Thompson, The Priesthood Ban and the Book of Abraham ^[29]

Later LDS racial theology went beyond Abraham 1, but the lineage-priesthood connection was already in the text. Once canonized, it became one of the scriptures used to defend a restriction that the Church now rejects.^[40]

“by 1912 this relatively new argument had become a foundation of Church policy”— Lester E. Bush Jr., Mormonism’s Negro Doctrine: An Historical Overview ^[40]

Abraham 2: geography and the Genesis problem

Abraham 2 follows Abraham from Ur to Haran, Canaan, and Egypt. Much of the narrative tracks the Abraham cycle in Genesis while adding first-person material and distinctive revelations.^[21]

For critics, that creates two different questions. The first is historical geography. If the northern-Ur model is adopted to support Olishem, the travel route can be made more geographically compact. If the traditional southern Ur is retained, some proposed locations for Olishem fit the itinerary less well. The text does not settle the debate, and archaeology has not independently traced the itinerary of the Book of Abraham.

The second problem is literary. The Book of Abraham repeatedly uses King James Bible language and structures that were already available to Joseph Smith in English.^[37]^[39] A revelatory translation could imitate biblical English, but that answer also means the English wording cannot be used as evidence that the text preserves Abraham’s own ancient language.

This literary dependence is especially visible in Abraham 4 and 5, where the creation narrative follows Genesis closely. But English biblical dependence by itself does not decide whether Joseph believed he was translating by revelation. It tells us about the form of the English text, not necessarily about every possible source behind it.

“Abraham 1-3 itself seems to be a creative expansion on Genesis 12”— Anthony A. Hutchinson, A Mormon Midrash? ^[39]

Abraham 3: Kolob and the hierarchy of worlds

Abraham 3 contains the Book of Abraham’s best-known cosmology. Abraham looks through the Urim and Thummim and is shown the stars. Kolob is described as a great governing body near the throne of God. Other celestial bodies have different “reckonings” of time, and a hierarchy is described in which one body may stand above another until Kolob.^[23]

Critics commonly make two arguments here. One says the astronomy is scientifically wrong. The other compares it with nineteenth-century popular religious astronomy, especially Thomas Dick.^[35]^[39]

Both need qualification.

Abraham 3 is not a modern astronomy textbook, so not every statement can be tested as a scientific equation. Its cosmology is theological. That also limits apologetic attempts to treat its astronomy as scientific confirmation. The chapter does not provide a testable astronomical model that independently points to an ancient source.^[23]

The Thomas Dick argument is also frequently overstated. Dick’s popular works discussed a vast inhabited universe, divine order, and the plurality of worlds. Those ideas circulated in Joseph Smith’s environment, and Oliver Cowdery favorably cited Dick in 1836.^[24]^[25] The parallels make Dick useful for showing that cosmic plurality and religious astronomy were part of the nineteenth-century intellectual world around early Mormonism.^[37]^[39]

They do not demonstrate that Joseph copied Abraham 3 from Dick. No surviving document shows Joseph consulting Dick while composing the chapter, and the systems are not identical. Dick should be treated as cultural context, not as a proven source.

The historically demonstrable point is that Abraham 3 fits comfortably into Joseph Smith’s nineteenth-century environment, which was full of religious discussion about astronomy, inhabited worlds, and cosmic hierarchy.^[24]^[25]^[37]^[39] Ancient parallels also exist, but broad similarities in either direction are less useful than the fact that the text’s immediate intellectual setting already supplied many of these ideas.

“pluralism filtered throughout American frontier society”— Robert E. Paul, Joseph Smith and the Plurality of Worlds Idea ^[25]

Premortal intelligences and the council in heaven

Abraham 3 moves from stars to souls. It describes “intelligences” that existed before the world, “noble and great ones” chosen as rulers, a council in which God plans the creation, and one figure who volunteers to be sent while another rebels.^[23]

These teachings became central to later Latter-day Saint ideas about premortal life. They are sometimes presented apologetically as evidence that the Book of Abraham preserves ancient concepts lost from ordinary Christianity. Ancient Jewish and Christian literature does contain divine councils, preexistence traditions, and heavenly assemblies.

But those similarities are too broad to function as a translation test. Joseph Smith had already been developing doctrines of heavenly councils, premortal existence, and the eternity of spirit in other revelations. Abraham 3 fits that developing theology very well.^[37]

This makes Abraham 3 fit naturally within Joseph Smith’s developing theology. A believer can read that continuity as restoration, but the doctrine itself does not provide independent evidence that Joseph translated it from Egyptian papyri.

What it does not do is independently connect the doctrine to the Egyptian papyri. Premortal intelligences may be important theology, but their theological appeal does not answer whether Joseph translated the Hôr material.

Abraham 4 and 5: creation by “the Gods”

The final two chapters retell the creation story using plural “Gods.” The Gods organize and form the heavens and earth, divide light from darkness, prepare the waters and land, create living things, and form humanity.^[26]^[27]

The dependence on Genesis is obvious at the narrative level. The order, episodes, and much of the English diction track the biblical creation account familiar to Joseph Smith. The major theological revision is the persistent pluralization of the creators and the use of language such as “organized” and “formed.”^[26]^[27]^[39]

Anthony Hutchinson’s literary analysis goes further than simply noting King James language. He compares Genesis, the Book of Moses, and the Book of Abraham as related creation narratives and argues that the direction of development makes better sense from Genesis to Joseph Smith’s expanding versions than the reverse.^[39] On that reading, Abraham 4 and 5 look like a later theological rewriting of biblical material rather than an independent ancient source behind Genesis.

That matters because the Book of Abraham appeared after Joseph had already produced the Book of Moses and spent years revising the Bible. Its creation account enters an existing stream of Joseph Smith scripture in which Genesis is repeatedly expanded to address new theological concerns. The plural “Gods,” organization of matter, and other distinctive features fit Joseph’s developing theology in the 1830s and early 1840s.^[37]^[39]

An ancient-source model can say Joseph translated Abraham into familiar biblical language. But that explanation has to account not only for vocabulary. It has to explain why the text follows the structure of the King James Genesis account while also developing themes already emerging in Joseph’s earlier revelations and biblical revision.^[37]^[39]

A text presented as Abraham’s ancient record closely follows an English Bible published millennia later.^[37]^[39] The usual LDS answer is that a revelatory translator could use familiar biblical language. That is possible, but it leaves the close dependence on Genesis as a nineteenth-century feature of the English text rather than evidence for an ancient Egyptian original.

Abraham 4 and 5 also show why the Book of Abraham debate cannot be reduced to the papyrus alone. Even if a lost Abraham manuscript were discovered tomorrow, scholars would still have to ask how the English text relates to Genesis, Joseph Smith’s earlier scriptural revisions, and his developing theology. Conversely, similarities to Joseph’s environment do not by themselves prove deliberate fabrication. They make a nineteenth-century compositional setting increasingly relevant to comparison.

“The book of Abraham breaks off abruptly … apparently unfinished.”— Anthony A. Hutchinson, A Mormon Midrash? ^[39]

Textual development and publication

The Book of Abraham was not published as a single recovered ancient artifact with a complete manuscript chain. Work began in Kirtland in 1835, paused, and then appeared in installments in the Times and Seasons in 1842. The Pearl of Great Price was first compiled in 1851 and canonized by the Church in 1880.^[2]^[32]

The surviving manuscripts show revision, scribal copying, and changes in wording. The Nauvoo-era text also contains Hebrew-derived terms and explanations that reflect Joseph Smith’s later study of Hebrew.^[7]^[32]

Revision by itself does not prove fraud. It does show that the Book of Abraham developed through a nineteenth-century process of dictation, copying, editing, Hebrew study, and publication rather than appearing as a fixed translated text.

A methodological problem appears when ancient-looking features are treated as evidence for antiquity while obvious nineteenth-century features are explained as the freedom of revelation. Used together, those moves make it difficult to identify what evidence could ever count against an ancient-source model.^[35]^[37]

Weak criticisms worth retiring

A careful critical case does not need every argument that has circulated online.

The claim that “Egyptians never practiced human sacrifice” is too absolute. Egyptian religion and state ritual include execution and ritual-killing traditions, even though that does not identify Facsimile 1 as Abraham’s sacrifice.^[15]

The claim that “the entire papyrus collection survives” is false. Material is missing.^[4]^[11]

The claim that the missing papyri “must” have contained the Book of Abraham is equally unsupported. Missing material creates a possibility, not evidence for its content.^[4]^[12]

The claim that Thomas Dick has been proved as Joseph Smith’s direct source for Abraham 3 goes beyond the documentary evidence. Dick is relevant cultural context, not demonstrated borrowing.^[24]^[25]

The claim that Abraham 1 plainly teaches the entire later Black priesthood ban also needs correction. The chapter contains a lineage-priesthood restriction and curse language, but the later racial system added claims the text does not state.^[28]^[29]

And the existence of Abraham’s name in late Egyptian magical texts does not authenticate Joseph’s translation. It only shows that Abraham could be incorporated into Egyptian religious literature in a much later, culturally mixed period.^[30]

Retiring weak arguments keeps the case focused on evidence that survives scrutiny rather than claims that can be easily disproved.

The Cumulative Case

No single argument has to carry the whole case. Some papyri are missing, and a catalyst theory can always separate revelation from literal translation. The problem is that each move answers one objection by narrowing the original claim that Joseph translated Abraham’s writings from Egyptian papyrus.

Taken together, the problems reach well beyond the fact that the surviving papyri are funerary texts. The Hôr papyrus dates many centuries after Abraham and belongs to a known Egyptian owner.^[14]^[34]^[43] Book of Abraham manuscripts pair English passages with characters from that funerary material, while the Egyptian grammar project assigns meanings those characters do not have.^[35]^[36] The facsimiles contain recognizable Egyptian figures and inscriptions that conflict with Joseph’s explanations, including readable labels in Facsimile 3.^[14]^[34]^[42] Abraham 1 also contains a cluster of later names and an Egyptian religious setting in Chaldea that does not fit the historical evidence.^[34] Abraham 4 and 5 closely develop Genesis and themes already present in Joseph Smith’s earlier scriptural work.^[37]^[39] These are separate lines of evidence that point in the same direction.

A believer can still understand the Book of Abraham as revelation. Historically, however, a nineteenth-century revelatory or compositional origin explains the surviving papyri, the failed Egyptian system, the manuscript evidence, the facsimile readings, and the text’s dependence on Joseph Smith’s biblical and theological world with fewer additional assumptions than a literal ancient-Abrahamic translation model.