As anyone whose made even a cursory critical study of the Book of Mormon (ie. not Mormons) knows, the text is riddled with anachronisms, errors, contradictions and logical impossibilities. If you haven’t yet taken the time to acquaint yourself with some of these howlers, let me direct you to the Skeptic’s Annotated Book of Mormon, which will fill you in. In spite of Mormon insistence of the contrary, there is no evidence whatsoever that Joseph Smith didn’t invent the entire thing himself, spinning a tall tale of “Golden Plates” and “Seeing Stones” to make his account seem more – ahem – realistic. However, it’s not the Book of Mormon I want to have a giggle at today, but rather one of Smith’s other confabulations – sorry: “discoveries” – namely the Book of Abraham, a later addition to the Mormon canon. Although it still resides today between the covers of The Pearl of Great Price, the Book of Abraham stands out as Joseph Smith’s most obvious and embarrassing fraud.
Published in 1840, the Book of Abraham purports to be a translation of some ancient papyrus documents, which Joseph Smith came into possession of in the 1830s. It is apparently a text in the hand of the patriarch Abraham himself, telling the story of his time in Egypt, and as such, is quite the archaeological find. Egyptologists and biblical historians the world over would love to get their hands on such a document – it would rank in importance with the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Code of Hammurabi or the Rosetta Stone. Why then, has there not been more investigation into this remarkable discovery? Well, Joseph Smith made one big mistake with the papyri – rather than conveniently losing them, as he did with Moroni’s Golden Plates, he left them in the public domain, where actual Egyptologists could examine them.
Although the Rosetta Stone, which enabled the translation of hieroglyphics, had been discovered in 1750, by the 1830s little progress had been made in recovering the Egyptian written language. Smith clearly realised that almost no-one at the time would have been able to understand the writing on his fragments of papyrus, and thus felt safe in claiming them as the source for his Abraham fiction. He used his Urim and Thummin, the same “seeing stones” as were used to translate the Book of Mormon, to “decipher” the text, and produced the hilarious text of the Book of Abraham. I don’t want to bore you with a critique of the entire book, but to give you a taster, here’s a little story from Chapter 1, in which our intrepid hero is about to be sacrificed by the nefarious priests of Elkenah…
“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.
It was made after the form of a bedstead, such as was had among the Chaldeans, and it stood before the gods of Elkenah, Libnah, Mahmackrah, Korash, and also a god like unto that of Pharaoh, king of Egypt.
That you may have an understanding of these gods, I have given you the fashion of them in the figures at the beginning, which manner of figures is called by the Chaldeans Rahleenos, which signifies hieroglyphics.
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, and he filled me with the vision of the Almighty, and the angel of his presence stood by me, and immediately unloosed my bands;
And his voice was unto me: Abraham, Abraham, behold, my name is Jehovah, and I have heard thee, and have come down to deliver thee, and to take thee away from thy father’s house, and from all thy kinsfolk, into a strange land which thou knowest not of;
And this because they have turned their hearts away from me, to worship the god of Elkenah, and the god of Libnah, and the god of Mahmackrah, and the god of Korash, and the god of Pharaoh, king of Egypt; therefore I have come down to visit them, and to destroy him who hath lifted up his hand against thee, Abraham, my son, to take away thy life.
Behold, I will lead thee by my hand, and I will take thee, to put upon thee my name, even the Priesthood of thy father, and my power shall be over thee.
As it was with Noah so shall it be with thee; but through thy ministry my name shall be known in the earth forever, for I am thy God.
Behold, Potiphar’s Hill was in the land of Ur, of Chaldea. And the Lord broke down the altar of Elkenah, and of the gods of the land, and utterly destroyed them, and smote the priest that he died; and there was great mourning in Chaldea, and also in the court of Pharaoh; which Pharaoh signifies king by royal blood.” Abraham 1:16-20
As you can tell from the first verse quoted above, Abraham even had the foresight to draw a sketch of the event, which is reproduced in The Pearl of Great Price, and also below.
Now there are a few textual problems with the verses above. The god Elkenhah, for example, will be new to anyone who has studied Ancient Middle-Eastern pantheons in any detail. Hardly surprising, since it’s a Hebrew proper name (meaning “God has redeemed”). The other gods or place-names – Libnah, Mahmackrah and Korash – also appear nowhere else in the historical record. Chaldea and the Chaldeans are mentioned, even though Chaldea didn’t exist until about 1000 years after Abraham’s time. The reference to Potiphar’s Hill is odd, given that Potiphar is an Egyptian, not a Chaldean, name (see the story of Joseph in Genesis 37:36), and wasn’t in use in Egypt until about 900 years after Abraham. Nonetheless, though, the main objection raised by Egyptologists to this passage is that the text above bears no relationship whatsoever to what the papyri actually say.
What Smith didn’t apparently consider was the prospect that some day, someone who could actually read hieroglyphics might get their hands on the original papyri. Once they did, the scam became apparent. The picture above, for example, does not show Abraham bound on an altar with a row of heathen idols in front – it shows the god Anubis mummifying/resurrecting the body of Osiris, a common theme in Egyptian art. (Anubis is commonly shown with a jackal’s head: the original papyrus is missing this portion, so Smith filled in the lacuna with a strange elfin face.) The “idols” are the canopic jars which contained the deceased’s internal organs. The text surrounding the image describes the burial ceremony for a priest named Hor, and shows that the papyrus as a whole was part of a rite to allow Hor’s resurrection in the next world. In other words, the entire story above is utter nonsense, concocted by Smith’s imagination alone. The same argument applies to the other ten papyri which have been subjected to scholarly scrutiny. Even the age of the texts is wrong – the handwriting dates from the second century BCE, almost two millennia too late for it to be Abraham’s.
With this book, Smith is conclusively shown up for the charlatan that he was, yet Mormons still continue to revere both this and his other works. Proof positive, if proof be needed, that when it comes to matters of religion, faith trumps reason, every time.
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