The Mormon Book of Abraham: Joseph Smith Deciphers Abraham’s Papyri

Joseph Smith Fulfills Isaiah’s Prophecy?

In September 1827, Joseph Smith (1805–1844) of Manchester, New York, the founder of the Mormon “Church of Christ”—today the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints [LDS]—claimed to have received a set of gold plates engraved with ancient characters, which he would translate by divine means.^[1] Later that year with the help of money from Martin Harris, a local farmer, who would become the project’s financier, he moved to Harmony, Pennsylvania.

Smith said the characters were ancient—he did not initially say in what language^[2]—but Harris’s wife, friends, and family suspected the whole thing was a ruse to take his money. So in early 1828, with Smith’s permission, Harris took a sheet of characters Smith said he had copied from the plate, and brought them to Dr. Samuel Mitchill in New York City, who said he lacked the training to judge the characters and gave Harris a note to go visit Prof. Charles Anthon, a classicist at Columbia, and ask him about the characters.^[3]

Anthon could not decipher the characters either and advised Harris to drop the project.^[4] Nevertheless, Harris came away with the belief that the experts were ignorant and only Smith really understood the writing. Smith’s 1832 history says^[5] that it was the learned scholars’ failure—“the learned said I cannot”—while for the less-educated Smith, “the Lord had prepared spectacles^[6] for to read the Book,” proves his translation genuine, and so “the Propicy [sic] of Isiaah was fulfilled”:

^{Isa 29:11} And the vision of all is become unto you as the words of a book that is sealed, which men deliver to one that is learned, saying, “Read this, I pray thee,” and he saith, “I cannot; for it is sealed.” ^29:12 And the book is delivered to him that is not learned, saying, “Read this, I pray thee,” and he saith, “I am not learned.” (KJV)^[7]

Harris returned to Harmony and from April to June 1828, he served as Smith’s scribe. In the summer, he lost the (116!) pages he had written, and the dictation was paused until only in April 1829, when it resumed in earnest with a new scribe, Oliver Cowdery, a schoolteacher and distant relative. The dictation and transcription was completed by the end of June 1829 and published as The Book of Mormon in March 1830.

The Book of Mormon: An Overview

The Book of Mormon tells the story of an Israelite family from Jerusalem, who flee the city shortly before the Babylonian destruction in the 7^th century B.C.E. Its head, Lehi, is a prophet whom God warns of Jerusalem’s coming fall. The family wanders in the wilderness, builds a ship, and sails to the Americas.

After Lehi dies, the family splits. His son Nephi, the righteous younger brother, leads one faction, the Nephites. His older brothers Laman and Lemuel, who resent Nephi and resist God, lead the other, the Lamanites. The text marks the Lamanites with a curse of dark skin—the book’s explanation for the appearance of the Native Americans, whom Smith and his followers took to be their descendants.^[8]

For centuries the two peoples are mostly at war, and the Nephites alternate between faithfulness and decline. The climax comes in the book of “3 Nephi”: Jesus, after his resurrection, appears to the people in the Americas, teaches them, and founds a church. A two-century long peace follows, and then the old divisions return.

The book itself is written as a series of records, narrated by the people who kept them. Nephi writes first, followed by a chain of prophets, kings, and chroniclers. Near the end, a Nephite general and prophet named Mormon abridges the whole history onto a set of gold plates, which is how the book got its name.^[9]

Nearly four centuries after Jesus’ appearance, the Lamanites wipe out the Nephites in a final battle. Mormon’s son Moroni survives alone, finishes the record, and buries the plates. It is this Moroni, Smith claims, appearing in angelic form in the time of Joseph Smith, who shows him the plates and teaches him their language.

The Tablets Were Written in Egyptian

The Book of Mormon names the language of the tablets as Egyptian in several places:

• Nephi, its first narrator, writes in “the language of the Egyptians” (1 Nephi 1:2);
• King Benjamin teaches his sons that Lehi knew the language of the Egyptians and taught it to his children (Mosiah 1:4);
• Moroni, the final narrator, says the record was written in “the characters which are called among us the reformed Egyptian being handed down and altered by us, according our manner of speech” (Mormon 9:32).

Five years later, in the summer of 1835, a traveling exhibitor named Michael Chandler came to Kirtland, Ohio—where Smith and his followers had now settled—auctioning off rolls of papyrus, found with mummies, that had been looted from Egypt. For Smith, who had published a book he said was translated from Egyptian, these were texts he would be expected to be able to read, and they presented him with both a challenge and an opportunity.

Joseph Smith Encounters Real Egyptian Papyri

When Chandler arrived in Kirtland around the end of June or beginning of July 1835,^[10] Smith apparently used a copy of the “caractors” document^[11] that he had created while dictating The Book of Mormon to then create what he claimed was a translation of some of the hieroglyphs on the papyri.^[12] Chandler then wrote up a certificate for Smith, stating that Smith had translated the Egyptian to his satisfaction and according to the information he had gained “from the learned” while on his traveling exhibition the last few years.^[13]

As the editors of the Joseph Smith Papers state, “modern Egyptological scholarship was so new that neither Chandler nor any other American at that time would likely have been able to make such an attestation authoritatively.”^[14] Some readers in 1830s America may have read Isaac Stuart’s^[15] 1830 translation of J. G. H. Greppo’s (1788–1863) French book-length explanation of how Jean François Champollion (1790–1832) deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphics.^[16]

Although Greppo provides a thorough explanation of Champollion’s system of understanding Egyptian, he includes only a few examples of hieroglyphic, hieratic, and demotic at the end of the book, which would have proven insufficient for Chandler or others to double-check Smith’s translation against. In any case, Chandler and the learned doctors he met with in the cities did not know Egyptian.

The certificate was, as the editors of the Joseph Smith Papers explain, likely an attempt on Chandler’s part “to ingratiate himself to the Latter-day Saints and increase the likelihood of a sale.”^[17] If that was what Chandler was doing, it worked, and his giving Smith a certificate would play a major role in the way Smith would soon come to rethink his earlier history.

Capitalizing on American Egyptomania

Smith convinced a few of his followers and a couple of non-Mormons to collectively finance the purchase of four mummies and two rolls of papyri so that he could both exhibit the mummies and, as he claimed, translate the papyri. Chandler left with $2,400^[18]—about $90,000 in 2026 money—and Smith left with a story that would develop and influence his retelling of the production of The Book of Mormon. The interaction between these two men would prove to be a defining moment in the early life of Mormonism.

The papyri themselves are ordinary funerary texts of the Ptolemaic period (3^rd–1^st cent. B.C.E., more than a millennium and a half after the time Abraham is supposed to have lived): a “Breathing Permit” written for a Theban priest named Ḥor and a hypocephalus for a man named Sheshonq. (See discussion in Flora Brooke Anthony, “Ancient Dead, Modern Faith: The Papyri Behind the Book of Abraham,” TheTorah [forthcoming]). Smith, however, claimed that they were nothing less than a text “written by his [Abraham’s] own hand, upon papyrus,”^[19] i.e., a lost book written by Abraham himself.^[20]

In Smith’s day, Anglo-Americans had become obsessed with Egypt and its relevance for understanding world history, like many Europeans did in the transatlantic world of the early nineteenth century. To most of them, world history was biblical history, and having more information about ancient Egypt would only help students of the Bible.

Joseph Smith drew on this transatlantic excitement about Egypt and the Bible, in what Jim Egan has termed “a kind of imaginary grave robbery,” where early American authors used figures from the East to further their textual, literary, and sometimes spiritual interests.^[21] In Smith’s case, he borrows from the biblical account of Genesis to create a short rewriting of the opening of Abraham’s story plus the creation account, in two installments, written as Abraham’s first-person narration.

Having bought the mummies and papyri from Chandler in early July 1835, Smith dictated the first installment of the Book of Abraham—what is now Abraham 1:1–2:18—between July and November of that year, but the text sat unpublished for the next six and a half years.

Revising the Anthon Story Based on Chandler’s Certificate

In the meantime, Chandler’s certificate inspired Smith to revise Harris’ story, claiming that Prof. Anthon also provided Harris with a certificate declaring that Smith’s translation of the Egyptian characters (of the future Book of Mormon) was accurate.^[22] Smith realized the utility of claiming to have a certificate (or now, certificates) declaring his ability to translate not only the Egyptian papyri but, retroactively, the Egyptian characters on the gold plates as well.^[23]

Anthon’s certificate is missing, the story goes, since the professor tore it up after Harris explained how Smith had found the plates through the direction of an angel. When Smith wrote this, in 1839, Harris had been excommunicated and was not part of the church to contradict Smith’s retelling,^[24] though he was rebaptized at Kirtland in 1842, the year Smith’s new history began appearing in the church newspaper Times and Seasons.^[25]

Publication of the Book of Abraham

On March 1, 1842, Smith printed the first installment of the Book of Abraham in Times and Seasons in Nauvoo, Illinois, together with the engraving now called Facsimile 1. A week later, on 8 March, his journal records that he “Commenced Translating from the Book of Abraham, for the 10 No of the Times and seasons,” and the second installment—now Abraham 2:19–5:21—appeared with Facsimile 2 in the issue of 15 March. Both installments were printed as continuous numbered verses, without chapters.

In May of that year, Facsimile 3 followed, which shows Abraham on Pharaoh’s throne “reasoning upon the principles of Astronomy, in the king’s court,” but without text narrating it. Around 1 March 1842 Smith drafted an editorial promising to “contin[u]e to translate & publish as fast as possible till the whole is completed,” yet nothing more of the Book of Abraham appeared.^[26]

In 1851, the Mormon apostle, Franklin D. Richards (1821–1899) gathered the texts and facsimiles, along with other texts—though out of their original order—and named the collection The Pearl of Great Price, which became Latter-day Saint scripture in 1880. In 1902, The Book of Abraham was put back into its original order and divided into the five chapters used by the LDS Church today.

Book of Abraham, Smith’s 1^st Installment (1835)

The first installment of the Book of Abraham begins with Abraham in the land of the Chaldeans, wishing to take up his birthright as High Priest, which he inherited through a long line of fathers, all the way back to Adam. But by this time, Abraham tells us, the people had become idolatrous:

^{Abraham 1:6} For their hearts were set to do evil, and were wholly turned to the god of Elkenah, and the god of Libnah, and the god of Mahmackrah, and the god of Korash, and the god of Pharaoh, king of Egypt;

Abraham was, therefore, turned over to the priest of Elkenah to be sacrificed:

^{Abraham 1:7} Therefore they turned their hearts to the sacrifice of the heathen in offering up their children unto these dumb idols, and hearkened not unto my voice, but endeavored to take away my life by the hand of the priest of Elkenah. The priest of Elkenah was also the priest of Pharaoh.

Chaldea, in Smith’s telling, was ruled by Egypt and thus subject to Egyptian ritual laws, which included human sacrifice, and indeed, this wicked priest was sacrificing virgins to the sun-god Shagreel when Abraham was brought before him:

^{Abraham 1:9} And it came to pass that the priest made an offering unto the god of Pharaoh, and also unto the god of Shagreel, even after the manner of the Egyptians. Now the god of Shagreel was the sun. ^1:10 Even the thank-offering of a child did the priest of Pharaoh offer upon the altar which stood by the hill called Potiphar’s Hill, at the head of the plain of Olishem.

^1:11 Now, this priest had offered upon this altar three virgins at one time, who were the daughters of Onitah, one of the royal descent directly from the loins of Ham. These virgins were offered up because of their virtue; they would not bow down to worship gods of wood or of stone, therefore they were killed upon this altar, and it was done after the manner of the Egyptians.

In a bout of “conscious mediation,” Abraham as narrator refers the audience to the first facsimile, describing it as a representation of the priest’s attempt to sacrifice him,^[27] implying also that he (Abraham) has created the facsimiles that accompany the text.^[28]

^{Abraham 1:12} And it came to pass that the priests laid violence upon me, that they might slay me also, as they did those virgins upon this altar; and that you may have a knowledge of this altar, I will refer you to the representation at the commencement of this record.

As in the story of the Akedah (binding of Isaac), God stops the sacrifice before it can occur:

^{Abraham 1:15} And as they lifted up their hands upon me, that they might offer me up and take away my life, behold, I lifted up my voice unto the Lord my God, and the Lord hearkened and heard, and he filled me with the vision of the Almighty, and the angel of his presence stood by me, and immediately unloosed my bands;

^1:16 And his voice was unto me: “Abraham, Abraham, behold, my name is Jehovah, and I have heard thee, and have come down to deliver thee, and to take thee away from thy father’s house, and from all thy kinsfolk, into a strange land which thou knowest not of.

God’s words here echo those of the Angel of YHWH to Abraham to stop the sacrifice of Isaac (Gen 22:11) as well as YHWH’s earlier message to Abraham to go to Canaan (Genesis 12:1).^[29] God continues by describing how he will punish the wicked idolators, after which, God destroys the altar and kills the idolatrous priest.

Smith does not reveal his influences in composing this story, but he was likely aware of some version of the midrashic trope that Abram, as a young monotheist, was turned over for execution to King Nimrod, when still living in Ur.^[30] In any event, as in the midrashic backstory, little to nothing of this section of the Book of Abraham has a basis in the biblical account.

The Famine in Chaldea and the Move to Canaan

Before continuing the story, Abraham goes into a digression about Egypt mostly based on the Bible (1:20–27), akin to what you might find in a monograph in the 1820s or 1830s about Egyptian history,^[31] and including an etymological claim that “Pharaoh signifies King by royal blood.”^[32] After this he returns to his own purpose in writing his history: to gather up histories written by previous patriarchs:

^{Abraham 1:28} But I shall endeavor, hereafter, to delineate the chronology running back from myself to the beginning of the creation, for the records have come into my hands, which I hold unto this present time.

Chaldea then suffers a famine, and Abraham’s father repents.^[33] At this point, the text overlaps considerably with the very beginning of the Abraham story in KJV Genesis (11:28–12:6), with Abraham’s family travelling to Haran, after which his father returns to idolatry, and Abraham, Sarai, and Lot continue on to Canaan at the behest of God, where Abraham builds an altar and offers a sacrifice (Abraham 2:1–18).

Book of Abraham, Smith’s 2^nd Installment (1842)

The second installment (now Abraham 2:19–5:21) was written six years later, by which point (1835–1836) Smith had taken Hebrew lessons from Joshua Seixas,^[34] a Jewish American convert to Christianity—though he told very few people—and applied some of what he had learned.^[35]

The story picks up with a retelling of Abraham’s move south, up until arriving at the border with Egypt (Gen 12:7–12:13). For apologetic reasons, the story is revised, making Abraham’s idea to pass Sarai off as his sister originate with a divine command, thus removing the blame from Abraham himself:

^{Abraham 2:22} And it came to pass when I was come near to enter into Egypt, the Lord said unto me: “Behold, Sarai, thy wife, is a very fair woman to look upon; ^2:23 Therefore it shall come to pass, when the Egyptians shall see her, they will say—She is his wife; and they will kill you, but they will save her alive; therefore see that ye do on this wise: ^2:24 Let her say unto the Egyptians, she is thy sister, and thy soul shall live.

In what is now chapters 3–5, Smith turns to a series of visions that Abraham receives from God, while holding the Urim and Thummim, which he got in Chaldea. The first vision is God explaining the stars and planets:

^{Abraham 3:2} And I saw the stars, that they were very great, and that one of them was nearest unto the throne of God; and there were many great ones which were near unto it; ^3:3 And the Lord said unto me: “These are the governing ones; and the name of the great one is Kolob,^[36] because it is near unto me, for I am the Lord thy God: I have set this one to govern all those which belong to the same order as that upon which thou standest.”

God then explains how time works, with a divine day equalling 1,000 years (3:4)^[37] and how the planets affect time (3:5–10). Abraham pauses to note how he was speaking with God face to face, after which, God teaches him the names of some of the planets, and it is here that Smith can use some of his newly acquired Hebrew, specifically, the word star in singular and plural (the other words are not Hebrew):

^{Abraham 3:13} And he said unto me: “This is Shinehah,” which is the sun. And he said unto me: “Kokob [=כּוֹכָב],” which is star. And he said unto me: “Olea,” which is the moon. And he said unto me: “Kokaubeam [=כּוֹכָבִים],” which signifies stars, or all the great lights, which were in the firmament of heaven.

God then promises Abraham offspring like the sand (3:14, parallel to the blessings to Abraham in Genesis 15:5 and 22:17), and noting the different levels of the planets, teaches him that there are two spirits, each eternal (“gnolaum,” a garbled form of לְעוֹלָם [leʿolam]), one more intelligent than the other (3:15–19). Then Abraham watches as God stands among the many souls created that would in the future inhabit the world (3:20–24), and one of the two eternal spirits says that they should create the world.

At this point, Smith borrows from Isaiah 6, and has God address a counsel of spirits^[38] asking whom should he send—in this case to create the world—and it is the Son of Man (=Jesus) who is chosen, while the other (presumably Satan) becomes angry (3:25–28).

Chapter 4 then narrates the creation of the world, more or less in keeping with what we see in Genesis 1. Because of his Hebrew lessons, Smith understood that אֱלֹהִים (Elohim, “god”) in the creation story is a plural term, and thus he renders it “Gods” (capitalized) in his version of the creation story.^[39] Finally, chapter 5 tells the story of the Garden of Eden up until the creation of woman and the naming of the animals (Gen 2:20), with the main difference being that, in this version, God makes woman before making the animals.^[40]

What Biblical Studies Can Learn from the Composition of the Book of Abraham

Only spanning five chapters in the current Latter-day Saint canon, and ten pages in its original serialized form with images, Smith’s “Book of Abraham” can easily be read in one sitting. Smith apparently felt that this work would add weight to his prophetic claims and The Book of Mormon. And indeed, the Book of Abraham shaped Latter-day Saint theology.

Its account of “the intelligences that were organized before the world was,” among them “noble and great ones” chosen before birth (Abraham 3:22–23), became a scriptural basis for the doctrine of premortal existence. Its claim that Noah “cursed [Pharaoh] as pertaining to the Priesthood” because of his descent from Ham (1:26–27) was cited from 1900 on as grounds for the church’s ban on ordaining Black men, which ended in 1978.

For critical study of the Bible, the Book of Abraham offers a scripture whose making we can watch. Several of the processes critical scholars posit for the production of ancient scripture are evident here: composition in stages, attribution to an ancient figure, rewriting of an older scriptural text, new theology drawn from a reading of its grammar, and interpretation by later communities.

In this case, we have copies of the papyri the text claims to come from, the manuscripts Smith dictated in Kirtland in 1835, his journal entry from the week in 1842 when he dictated the rest, and the newspaper issues in which it appeared. We can see the seam between the two writing periods fall between Genesis 12:6 and 12:7. We can watch Hebrew lessons from Joshua Seixas turn the Elohim of Genesis 1 into a council of Gods. And we can follow what came after: canonization in 1880, the reordering into chapters in 1902, and Mormon doctrine drawn from the details of Abraham’s testimony as translated by Smith.