The founding claims

The Book of Abraham

The one translation we could check. The Church now admits the characters do not match.

The point in one sentence

The Book of Abraham is the only case where we have both Joseph Smith's claimed source document and the independent ability to read it, and the source turned out to be an ordinary Egyptian funerary text that says nothing about Abraham.

A verdict the Church took a century to reach

The world's leading Egyptologists ruled on the facsimiles in 1912. The Church conceded the point in 2014.

1835

Joseph Smith acquires Egyptian mummies and papyri, and says one roll contains "the writings of Abraham."

1842

The Book of Abraham is published with three facsimiles and his explanations of each.

1912

Eight leading Egyptologists, including Breasted, Petrie, and Mace, examine the facsimiles and unanimously reject the translation. Petrie: "there is not one single word that is true in these explanations."

1967

The papyri, long thought destroyed, resurface at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and are returned to the Church.

2014

The Church publishes its Gospel Topics Essay conceding that the characters "do not match the translation given in the book of Abraham."

Sources: Church Gospel Topics Essay; Spalding, Joseph Smith Jr. as a Translator (1912)

The exhibits

What follows is the case as it stands in the primary record: the Church’s own words, Joseph Smith’s own published captions, and the verdicts of the leading Egyptologists of his day. Every quote is verbatim and every source is linked.

Exhibit A

The Church of Jesus Christ, Gospel Topics essay, "Translation and Historicity of the Book of Abraham"

Published 2014

"None of the characters on the papyrus fragments mentioned Abraham’s name or any of the events recorded in the book of Abraham."

What it establishes: The Church itself concedes that the surviving source document says nothing of Abraham or his story.

Read the essay on churchofjesuschrist.org

Exhibit B

Same essay, on the age of the papyri

Published 2014

"These fragments date to between the third century B.C.E. and the first century C.E., long after Abraham lived."

What it establishes: By the Church’s own dating, the papyri were written roughly 1,500 to 1,800 years after Abraham is said to have lived, so they cannot be his autograph writings.

Same essay

Exhibit C

Joseph Smith, Facsimile 1 explanation, Pearl of Great Price (still canonized and printed today)

First published 1842

"Fig. 3. The idolatrous priest of Elkenah attempting to offer up Abraham as a sacrifice."

What it establishes: Joseph’s own published, still-canonical identification. Egyptologists identify the identical scene as a routine embalming vignette, the jackal-headed god Anubis attending the body of Osiris on a lion couch, a scene found on countless funerary documents.

Joseph’s caption, on churchofjesuschrist.org

Exhibit D

W.M. Flinders Petrie, University of London, in F.S. Spalding, "Joseph Smith, Jr., as a Translator"

1912

"It may be safely said that there is not one single word that is true in these explanations."

What it establishes: The founder of modern scientific archaeology, judging Joseph’s published captions 55 years before the papyri resurfaced, so no missing-scroll theory can touch this verdict.

BYU’s own scanned copy

Exhibit E

Arthur C. Mace, Assistant Curator of Egyptian Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, in the same 1912 volume

1912

"The Book of Abraham, it is hardly necessary to say, is a pure fabrication."

What it establishes: A second independent Egyptologist, from a different institution, reaching the same conclusion from the same published facsimiles.

Same volume

James Henry Breasted, founder of the Oriental Institute at Chicago, was the third of the 1912 panel and concurred that Joseph’s captions showed no knowledge of Egyptian; his exact wording is not reproduced here because it could not be verified verbatim to the page, and this site does not print a quote it cannot source. The two above are enough.

When they say

"The scroll was 40 feet long and we only have 3 feet." Possible, but unfalsifiable, and it provides no positive evidence. The leading LDS Egyptologist making the argument, John Gee, concedes: "the length of the scroll does not tell us what was on the scroll." FAIR's own page

"Catalyst theory." The Church's current fallback, and it is coherent. But it is a modern reinterpretation. Joseph never described it that way, and his Kirtland Egyptian Papers show him building a systematic character by character translation grammar.

Why this should make you question

Joseph Smith claimed the same gift for the Book of Mormon, the Book of Abraham, and his revelations. The gold plates are gone, so that translation cannot be checked. The Book of Abraham papyri survived. When we finally got to check the one that was checkable, it was wrong.

This page is part of a 76-topic library. Every claim links to its source, most of them the Church’s own. Read it on the full site or browse every topic.