Science & Archaeologyabrahamfacsimilespapyritranslation

Book of Abraham Facsimiles

Did Joseph Smith simply bungle Egyptian drawings that Egyptologists now read as ordinary funerary scenes?

Bible

The Bible answers

Bible · Genesis 15:5

KJV + NRSVUE

King James Version
And he brought him forth abroad, and said, Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them: and he said unto him, So shall thy seed be.

NRSVUE
He brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your descendants be.”

Bible · Genesis 12:10, 17

KJV + NRSVUE

King James Version
And there was a famine in the land: and Abram went down into Egypt to sojourn there… And the LORD plagued Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai Abram’s wife.

NRSVUE
Now there was a famine in the land. So Abram went down to Egypt to reside there as an alien… But the LORD afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram’s wife.

Book of Mormon

Also restored

Abraham 1:12, 15
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… 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.

Abraham 3:11–12
Thus I, Abraham, talked with the Lord, face to face, as one man talketh with another; and he told me of the works which his hands had made; And he said unto me: My son, my son (and his hand was stretched out), behold I will show you all these. And he put his hand upon mine eyes, and I saw those things which his hands had made, which were many; and they multiplied before mine eyes, and I could not see the end thereof.

Ancient witnesses

Dead Sea Scrolls and related extra-biblical texts that illuminate the same pattern the Restoration restores.

Apocalypse of Abraham

The Apocalypse of Abraham has Abraham reject his father’s idols, escape destruction, and then be taken up to see the heavens, the earth, the sea, the courts of the throne, and the orders of stars—precisely the mix of idol-polemic, near-death, and cosmology in the Book of Abraham.

Joseph Smith did not have this text in 1835 in any ordinary scholarly way. The parallel is not a proof that Facsimile 1 is a photograph of Abraham, but it is a proof that the Book of Abraham’s story is at home in ancient Abraham literature Egyptologists and biblical scholars now know.

Testament of Abraham

The Testament of Abraham sends Abraham on a heavenly journey, shows him judgment scenes, and places him before a throne. Facsimile 2’s hypocephalus—cosmic disk, throne, solar boat, four figures—is the visual vocabulary of that heavenly tour.

Lion-couch vignettes can be read as embalming Osiris. They can also, in a revelatory or Jewish-Egyptian reading, be the attempt on Abraham’s life the midrashim and the Apocalypse already tell. The Church does not pretend the surviving JSP fragments are a conventional running translation of Abraham’s autobiography. It does insist that the book teaches Abraham’s God, Abraham’s stars, and Abraham’s covenant.

Faithful answers

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Translation and Historicity of the Book of Abraham

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

The official essay is a model of honesty: the fragments do not mention Abraham; Egyptologists do not match Joseph’s explanations as a museum label; and still the book’s status as scripture is not a vote of papyrology. Ancient extra-biblical Abraham texts echo its contents. Revelation can use a catalyst. Missing rolls remain possible. The Spirit still confirms the doctrine.

None of the characters on the papyrus fragments mentioned Abraham’s name or any of the events recorded in the book of Abraham… The veracity and value of the book of Abraham cannot be settled by scholarly debate concerning the book’s translation and historicity. The book’s status as scripture lies in the eternal truths it teaches and the powerful spirit it conveys.

Honesty first: conventional Egyptology does not read Facsimile 1 as “Abraham fastened upon an altar.” That fact is not hidden, and it should not be.
Ancient texts (Eupolemus, Apocalypse of Abraham, Jubilees, midrash) already have Abraham in Egypt, nearly sacrificed, and teaching the heavens.
Translation in Joseph’s world included revelatory reading, not only dictionary work. The Book of Mormon’s interpreters set that precedent.
Abraham 3’s cosmology, premortal council, and agency are fruits. A book is known that way too (Matthew 7).

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Pearl of Great Price Central

Careful work on the facsimiles shows that several of Joseph’s identifications have plausible ancient analogues (four sons of Horus, solar boat, cosmic disk, throne scenes) even where a one-to-one Egyptological caption differs. The conversation is not over.

Joseph Smith’s explanations of the facsimiles should be studied alongside both Egyptology and the ancient Abraham tradition. Some labels remain disputed; some have aged better than the first generation of critics expected.

Facsimile 2 is a hypocephalus, a cosmic map under the head of the dead—an apt visual for Abraham 3.
Human-sacrifice traditions in Middle Kingdom and later sources, and extra-biblical Abraham nearly being offered, keep Facsimile 1 in play as more than a howler.
We do not need to overclaim. We do need to stop pretending the only possible reading was settled in 1912.

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