Could Abraham Have Written the Book of Abraham?

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Could Abraham Have Written the Book of Abraham?

Summary: Critics of the book of Abraham as well as faithful scholars of it have pointed to a lot of anachronisms that supposedly make it unlikely that the book of Abraham could have been authored by Abraham himself. An anachronism is a claim that something exists in a given time period when it actually didn't. To say that "Abraham Lincoln called his wife on his cellphone" would be an anachronistic claim since cellphones are known to have not existed during Abraham Lincoln's lifetime. This page provides an overview of the claims of anachronisms and responses to them. It concludes with the most likely scenario for how Abraham could have been involved in the production of the book of Abraham. All conclusions on this page are tentative as research on the claims of anachronism progresses.

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The Dating of the Papyri

In 1967, the Church acquired some surviving fragments of the papyri from which the translation was rendered from the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art through the help of Dr. Aziz Atiya, a professor at the University of Utah.

As papyrological work was done, scholars discovered that the papyrus dated to at least 1700 years (Between 300 BCE – 100 CE) after the prophet Abraham is traditionally claimed to have lived (2000 BCE).

Many have naturally asked the question of how can the papyri date to such a late time and record genuinely historical events from the life of the supposedly historical Abraham.

Examples of Texts that have Survived for Long Periods of Time

In response, it may be noted that we do have knowledge of texts that record historical events and survive scribal transmission for a long period of time.

For example, The Book of the Dead was copied from the New Kingdom period of ancient Egyptian history clear down to the end of the Ptolemaic Period. That's 1000+ years of transmission.

Additionally, the oldest portions of the Pentateuch (e.g. the Song of Moses in Exodus 15) were passed through scribal transmission for well over 1,500+ years.

What's more, narrative texts from the Middle Kingdom period in Egyptian history like the Story of Sinuhe were preserved in copies belonging to the New Kingdom period, which would be around 700+ years of transmission.

Perhaps our best parallel would be the Holy Bible. It has a pretty long manual transmission history from autographs penned in the Iron Age all the way down to when they were placed in print editions of the Bible starting in the 1500s. In other words, people were hand-copying these texts with a fair degree of accuracy for over 3,000 years and yet we hold their texts as fairly accurate historically speaking.

Elements of the Book of Abraham that Date to the Time of Abraham

Elements from the Book of Abraham that can definitively place it in the time that the historical Abraham is claimed to live can help us construct the historical core of the Book of Abraham and bolster the claim of historical authenticity. Some of these elements that can more than plausibly date to Abraham’s day include:

• Human sacrifice
• The God of Elkenah
• Olishem
• The idolatrous gods represented by the canopic jars in facsimile 1.
• Stating that autographs are “written in the hand” of that person.
• Identification of Shinehah as “the sun”.
• The name "Shulem" as reference to the king's waiter.
• The astronomy of the Book of Abraham.
• The identification of a crocodile as "The God of Pharoah".

Stephen Smoot and Kerry Muhelstein’s Paper on the Transmission of the Book of Abraham

Stephen O. Smoot—a PhD student in Egyptian and Semitic Languages and Literature—and Dr. Kerry Muhelstein (PhD Egyptology, UCLA)—a professor of ancient scripture at Brigham Young University—have outlined a plausible scenario in which a text containing the autobiographical writings of Abraham could have been preserved and transmitted for that long of time and on the type of papyrus that Joseph Smith claimed to translate from. We strongly encourage readers to review their paper published in BYU Studies on the subject.

BYU Studies, "Prophets, Pagans, and Papyri: The Jews of Greco-­Roman Egypt and the Transmission of the Book of Abraham"

Stephen O. Smoot and Kerry Muhelstein,  BYU Studies 61/2 (2022)

Complications and questions abound regarding the historicity of the Book of Abraham, its relationship to the papyri owned by Joseph Smith, the way it was translated, and the Prophet’s interpretation of the three facsimiles that accompany the text. Given the gaps in the historical record (to say nothing of the diverse methodological assumptions that have undergirded different approaches to the text), this subject will give scholars plenty of fodder for continued academic investigation. One question that remains open for examination is how a purported autobiography of the patriarch Abraham could have been transmitted from his time (most likely circa 2,000–1,800 BC) into the Ptolemaic period (when the Joseph Smith Papyri were created)—a journey of well over a millennium and a half! How feasible or likely is it that a copy of Abraham’s writings could have been recovered from a point in history so far removed from his own time? How was the text transmitted, and when? And by whom? And for what purpose(s)? And how likely is it that Abraham’s writings would have been associated with a collection of funerary papyri seemingly unrelated to anything Jewish or biblical?

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These and other elements can combine to help us understand that, even though a text does have a very, very long transmission history, it can still plausibly preserve literal historical events from the lives of the first authors. That does not mean that the text as it has been preserved to us today must have originated entirely from the mind of the historical Abraham. Scribes and redactors could have made inspired emendations to the text over the years and we would still have a text that dates originally to the time of Abraham.

The Book of Abraham's Claim to Being Written by Abraham's "Own Hand Upon Papyrus"

BYU Studies (2022): By His Own Hand upon Papyrus (Article)

But beyond the dating of the papyri, critics also take note of the book of Abraham's introduction. The opening of the book of Abraham contains the following intro:

The heading of the book of Abraham as part of the current, 2013 edition of the scriptures of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Where does the claim that the book of Abraham was written by his "own hand upon papyrus" come from? What does it mean? Does it complicate the claimed divine origin of the book?

There are two theories that can help us address this claim. The first is that the phrase "by his own hand" refers to authorship of the text and not the particular copy we have today. The second is that the phrase "by his own hand" is a 19th century title given to the book by Joseph Smith and/or his associates.

The Scenes in the Facsimiles

Critics also claim that the scenes as contained in the facsimiles—including the "sacrifice" scene in Facsimile 1, the hypocephualus that is Facsimile 2, and the "court room" scene of Facsimile 3— are anachronistic to the time of Abraham. Egyptians are claimed to have not produced these kinds of scenes in their graffitis and papyri until after the lifetime of Abraham. Reverend Franklin S. Spaulding of the Utah Episcopal Church was the first to make the claim of the scenes portrayed in the facsimiles being anachronistic to the lifetime of Abraham in his pamphlet “Joseph Smith Jr. as Translator” in the year 1912. This claim is true. We will explore implications for this below.

The Identity of Ur of the Chaldees

The phrase "Ur of the Chaldees" appears in the Old Testament in Genesis 11꞉26-28 in connection with Abraham (Abram) and his father Terah:

26 And Terah lived seventy years, and begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran.
27 ¶Now these are the generations of Terah: Terah begat Abram, Nahor, and Haran; and Haran begat Lot.
28 And Haran died before his father Terah in the land of his nativity, in Ur of the Chaldees.

The Chaldeens are mentioned a number of times in the Book of Abraham (Abraham 1:1, 8, 13, 20, 23, 29, 30, 2:4 and 3:1.) Abraham 3꞉1 states:

And I, Abraham, had the Urim and Thummim, which the Lord my God had given unto me, in Ur of the Chaldees

It is claimed that the mention of "Ur of the Chaldees" in the Book of Abraham is an anachronism. According to Stephen Thompson, "scholarly estimates for the age of the patriarchs range from 2200 to 1200 B.C." The Chaldeans, on the other hand, did not appear until hundreds of years later. Thompson notes that, "anything occurring after 1500 B.C. is definitely anachronistic to Abraham's lifetime."

An additional complication is that scholars today place "Chaldea" in southern Mesopotamia, which is too far away to have any Egyptian influence.

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The Location of "Ur of the Chaldees" is Not Known

BYU Studies (2024): Ur of the Chaldees (Article)

The location of "Ur of the Chaldees" is not known, although that has been much speculation among religious scholars concerning its possible location. It is noted by the Church that "[m]ost scholars today locate 'Chaldea' (or Ur) in southern Mesopotamia, removed from the area of Egyptian influence, but cogent arguments have been made for a northern location, within the realm of Egyptian influence."

Those "cogent arguments" for a northern location can be found in the BYU Studies link to the right.

Chariots

Notes