Abraham, Egypt

In 1830, Joseph Smith claimed to have translated the Book of Mormon from tablets written in Egyptian. In 1835, he bought Egyptian funerary papyri from a traveling exhibitor, which he declared to have been written by Abraham. Over the coming years he published his translation as the Book of Abraham, which later became part of the LDS canon. Because every stage of this process is documented, we can see how a mid-century piece of American literature was made into scripture by a new religious movement.

When Pharaoh takes Sarai into his palace, rather than being a passive victim, as in the Bible, the midrash has Sarai taking her complaint directly to God and commanding an angel regarding her protection and the punishment of her captors.

When Sarah overhears that she and Abraham will have a baby, she laughs. When confronted, she denies it, fearing Abraham’s reaction. After all, Abraham has consistently put Sarah in difficult situations, neglected her, and seemed content with Ishmael, Hagar’s son, as his heir.

The sister-wife story of Abraham and Sarah in Egypt reworks the sister-wife story of Isaac and Rebekah in Gerar. The passage is an intertextual bricolage, composed to have Abraham, the paradigmatic “first Israelite,” personally experience the nation's core redemptive event.

Abraham, Jacob, and the Israelites in Egypt acquire wealth from foreign peoples in morally ambiguous ways. In contrast, the Judeans’ return from exile, depicted as a second exodus, is accomplished with the blessing of the gentile king, and the wealth obtained in exile is entirely untainted.

From God’s first command to Moses, through the story of Israel’s escape, the demand for a three-day festival in the wilderness plays a prominent role in the exodus narrative. Part of this ruse was Israel’s request to “borrow” Egyptian finery for the festival. Why does God want the Israelites to use deception?

Paul, in the 1^st century C.E., allegorizes the expulsion of Hagar to argue that his rivals should be expelled from the church. Nahmanides, in the 13^th century, uses the same biblical story to explain why Jews of his day are persecuted. The assumption shared in both Judaism and Christianity: The Bible speaks to present-day circumstances.