This topic is one of the most common reasons Ex-Mormons will give for why they lost faith in Joseph Smith and the LDS Church. Why does this topic stick out more than the others? I will provide the background summary and if you wish to dig further into the details directly from the LDS Church gospel topics essays, you can do so by clicking on this link: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics-essays/translation-and-historicity-of-the-book-of-abraham?lang=eng
- Joseph Smith purchased an Egyptian scroll from a man named Michael Chandler in 1835.
- After Smith translated it, he described the scroll as: “the writings of Abraham, while he was in Egypt, called the Book of Abraham, written by his own hand, upon papyrus.”
- It is important to note that at this time, scholars were still trying to figure out how to translate Egyptian into English. This gave Smith to liberty to make the scroll say whatever he would like and no one could prove him wrong.
- Smith eventually sold the Egyptian papyri after translating it. It was believed that most of the papyri was destroyed during the Chicago fire in 1871. But lo and behold, ten papyrus fragments once in Joseph Smith’s possession ended up in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. They were purchased back by the LDS Church in 1967.
- By this time, the discovery of the Rosetta stone occurred and this enabled scholars to crack the code to translate Egyptian into English. The LDS Church was excited to have Egyptologists translated the Book of Abraham. After all, if they could prove that Smith accurately translated the papyri, this would be undeniable proof that he was indeed a prophet of God.
- After the Egyptologists translated the scroll that was supposedly written by the very hand of Abraham, they concluded that Smith didn’t accurately translated a single character, Abraham was not mentioned anywhere, the scroll dates to about 300 BC (far after the time of Abraham), and it was actually instructions for a pagan funeral.
- The LDS Church acknowledges all of these things and are now forced to take the extremely biased explanation of: “Even though this document doesn’t literally say anything about Abraham and Smith didn’t literally “translate” it…God still used it to give Joseph Smith a revelation of the life of Abraham.” This is the position that is the LDS Church puts forth in the gospel topics essays.
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Below is part of what the recovered papyrus looked like and as you can see there are some missing fragments. This particular picture is known as “Facsimile #1” in the Book of Abraham. A facsimile is another word for picture or copy:
Another common explanation for Smith’s translation might be: “Paul, the Book of Abraham was a long scroll. Yes, we now have part of that scroll, but we don’t have all of it. The part that we have now, doesn’t match the Book of Abraham but that doesn’t matter because those parts are NOT what Smith translated. All of the parts that Joseph Smith translated are missing.” First Smith translates the gold plates and those go missing. Now Smith translates the Egyptian papyri and all of the parts he translated go missing as well…convenient.
This explanation is sometimes referred to as “the missing papyri” theory. I’m not going to spend time debating that point because it’s an argument from silence and even if it was the case, it honestly does not much change the situation at hand.
Instead, we can analyze the facsimiles for ourselves and see where it takes us. Let’s start with Facsimile #1. As previously mentioned, this picture had some missing fragments. This meant that God had to give Jospeh Smith divine powers and knowledge to sketch in the missing parts and complete the picture so that he could “translate” the Book of Abraham:
Scholars know that the picture on the right is a correct representation of the entire facsimile because they’ve discovered many other pagan funeral instructions in Egypt that are identical to facsimile. They all look like the picture on the right. Joseph Smith also listed the explanation/translation of the facsimile. You’ll notice that there are numbers on Joseph Smith’s facsimile. He goes through and tells us what each numbered figure is translated as. Let’s compare what Joseph Smith said against what the Egyptologists said:
As you can see, not a single character was translated correctly and Abraham has nothing to do with this picture. Below is facsimile #2 and under it are the explanations/translations of Joseph Smith vs Egyptologist:
Notice figures 9-21 specifically on Smith’s translation. I would say that Smith was very wise in his approach by leaving unfilled revelations in his back pocket in case anything went sideways and he needed a “quick revelation.” Anyhow, this one is another swing and a miss by Smith. Let’s see how close he got on Facsimile #3:
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And that is strike 3. As we can see for ourselves, Joseph Smith was nowhere close to accurately translating these facsimiles. The proof is right there in plain sight for anyone that has eyes to see. The reason why so many LDS members have left over this topic is because of how clearly this demonstrates that Smith was a fraud.
Please know that I don’t say these things with any kind of pleasure. I sincerely encourage you not to follow men on earth who claim to be modern day prophets and apostles. We need to be wise and remember what Jesus said would happen in the last days:
Matthew 24:11 “many false prophets will appear and deceive many people.”
Today, there are indeed many false religions where people claim to be prophets and to have authority. I also beg you not to make the mistake of fully committing yourself to a church and thinking that this is the same thing as having a personal relationship with Jesus. Although those two things might be related, they are not the same thing.
Don’t allow yourself to be misled by modern-day “prophets” who have said, “God told me to tell you this…” Instead, remove the men and women of this world who are standing between you and God. Follow Jesus by trusting in the words that He directly spoke which are found in the New Testament. There is always hope and redemption in Christ! To learn more about having a personal relationship with Jesus, check out my article: Who Is Your Personal Mediator (https://jllds.org/2023/12/13/who-is-your-personal-mediator/)
Please let me know your thoughts, things you appreciated or things that you disagreed with in the comment section below. Thank you for reading and never stop chasing after Jesus!
JLLDS Ministries 