How can the Book of Abraham be scripture if the papyri look like ordinary funeral texts?
The Bible answers
King James Version
After these things the word of the Lord came unto Abram in a vision, saying, Fear not, Abram: I am thy shield… Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them.
NRSVUE
After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, 'Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield'… 'Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.'
King James Version
As for these four children, God gave them knowledge and skill in all learning and wisdom: and Daniel had understanding in all visions and dreams.
NRSVUE
To these four young men God gave knowledge and skill in every aspect of literature and wisdom; Daniel also had insight into all visions and dreams.
Abraham 1:1–4
Abraham seeks the blessings of the fathers, priesthood, and to be a greater follower of righteousness — then is put on an altar in Egypt.
Our explanation
Abraham seeks the blessings of the fathers. That is priesthood, not a museum label.
Abraham 3:22–23
Now the Lord had shown unto me, Abraham, the intelligences that were organized before the world was; and among all these there were many of the noble and great ones.
Dead Sea Scrolls and related extra-biblical texts that illuminate the same pattern the Restoration restores.
Apocalypse of Abraham; Testament of Abraham
Jewish Abraham apocalypses send the patriarch through the heavens, expose idolatry, and show pre-mundane order — the same thought-world as Abraham 1–3.
Joseph did not own these texts. The Restoration returned an Abraham who looks like the Abraham Jews remembered.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Gospel Topics Essays
The Church’s 2014 essay is the public record. In July 1835 Latter-day Saints in Kirtland bought four mummies and papyrus rolls from Michael Chandler. Joseph, with Phelps and Cowdery as scribes, said one roll contained the writings of Abraham and another the writings of Joseph of Egypt. After Joseph’s death the collection was divided and sold. Most of it went to a museum in Chicago and burned in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. In 1967 the Metropolitan Museum of Art gave the Church ten fragments that had stayed in a private line — short funerary texts (a Book of Breathings for a priest named Hor, and Book of the Dead pieces). They do not contain the Book of Abraham narrative. The essay says we now have only a fraction of the papyri Joseph possessed, so reconstructing a character-for-character link is guesswork. It allows a missing long scroll and a catalyst reading. Facsimiles can carry revealed meaning the way ancient commentary does. Historicity notes in the essay include human sacrifice in Abraham’s world, a place-name like Olishem/Ulisum, Abraham teaching astronomy, and Abraham 3’s poetic structure.
Only small fragments of the long papyrus scrolls once in Joseph Smith’s possession exist today. The relation of these fragments to the book of Abraham is not entirely clear.
Joseph Smith Papers / Messenger and Advocate / Overland Monthly
W. W. Phelps, Oliver Cowdery, Joseph Smith, Charlotte Haven
This is not a late theory. It is 1835 paperwork. Phelps wrote his wife on 20 July 1835, days after the purchase: four mummies; two papyrus rolls besides other ancient Egyptian writings; Joseph said the rolls contained a sacred record of Joseph in Pharaoh’s court and the teachings of Father Abraham. The published History has Joseph, with Phelps and Cowdery, identifying one roll as Abraham and another as Joseph of Egypt. Oliver Cowdery’s December 1835 Messenger and Advocate letter counts two rolls plus two or three small pieces (epitaphs, astronomical notes). In Nauvoo in 1843, Charlotte Haven — not a Latter-day Saint — watched Lucy Mack Smith open a long roll of manuscript and call it the writing of Abraham. Jerusha Blanchard and other visitors remembered a roll with the mummies as the source of the Book of Abraham. The 1967 fragments look like Cowdery’s ‘small pieces,’ not Haven’s long roll. Lost-scroll is the first-hand inventory, not a rescue after 1967.
With them were two papyrus rolls, besides some other ancient Egyptian writings. … the rolls of papyrus contained a sacred record kept by Joseph in Pharaoh’s court in Egypt and the teachings of Father Abraham. — W. W. Phelps, 20 July 1835
Maxwell Institute / FARMS
John Gee
Gee, an Egyptologist, maps what Joseph owned versus what we still have. The Hor Book of Breathings (the fragment with Facsimile 1) reconstructs to a short funerary text, on the order of a few feet. That is not the ‘long roll’ visitors described. Glue-lines and winding estimates have been debated; even the shorter reconstruction is not two rolls plus fragments. Gee’s point is inventory: multiple documents, a missing remainder, and no honest way to treat the Met fragments as Joseph’s whole library. Egyptologists and Latter-day Saint scholars agree on one sentence: the Breathing Permit of Hor is not the Book of Abraham. The fight is whether Joseph ever claimed those columns were the book, or whether the book came from the rest of the collection — the part that burned.
The Document of Breathings made by Isis is not the Book of Abraham. The eyewitnesses were counting rolls we do not have.
BYU / Pearl of Great Price Central
Kerry Muhlestein
Muhlestein presses the same documents: how much papyrus is missing, what ‘translate’ meant for a seer, and which assumptions are smuggled in when someone says ‘the papyri we have are the papyri he used.’ He also works the ancient side: Abraham in Egypt, a lion-couch scene, human sacrifice as a known horror, and Abraham teaching the heavens — none of which required a 1967 museum tag. Read him after the essay and Gee. Do not skip the purchase records to start the argument in 1967.
You cannot judge a translation against a collection you do not have. Start with what Joseph bought.
Maxwell Institute / BYU
Hugh Nibley
Nibley did the slow work on Abraham: idolatry and a sacrificial altar, a heavenly vision, a cosmology that is not 1830s New York, and a patriarch who looks like the Abraham of extra-biblical Jewish books Joseph did not own. Egyptology can label a fragment. It cannot cancel a seer. The Book of Abraham is judged by that recovered world, not by a museum caption on ten scraps.
Abraham in Egypt is not a Sunday School rumor. It is an ancient file Nibley opened and the Restoration filled.
Mormonr
Mormonr
Dates, fragments, the Kirtland Egyptian papers, the sale to Abel Combs, the Chicago museum, the 1871 fire, and the 1967 transfer. Use Mormonr for the paper trail. Write the conclusion from the witnesses and the essay: Joseph had more papyri than we have. The surviving funerary fragments do not decide whether God spoke Abraham 1–5.
The documents show a larger collection than the fragments now in Salt Lake.
Faithful voices only. Most of these are independent — not official Church productions unless marked as such.
Be the first to tell us if this case is strong.
