Appearance
Anachronisms & Source Texts
The claim:
"The Book of Abraham teaches an incorrect Newtonian view of the universe. These Newtonian astronomical concepts, mechanics, and models of the universe have since been succeeded and substantially modified by 20th century Einsteinian physics."[1]
"86% of Book of Abraham chapters 2, 4, and 5 are King James Version Genesis chapters 1, 2, 11, and 12. Sixty-six out of seventy-seven verses are quotations or close paraphrases of King James Version wording."[2]
"Why are there anachronisms in the Book of Abraham? For example, the terms Chaldeans, Egyptus, and Pharaoh are all anachronistic. Additionally, Abraham refers to the facsimiles in 1:12 and 1:14. However, as noted and conceded above in the Church's essay, these facsimiles did not even exist in Abraham's time as they are standard first century C.E. pagan Egyptian funerary documents."[3]
"Facsimile 2, Figure #5 states the sun receives its 'light from the revolutions of Kolob.' We now know, however, that the process of nuclear fusion is what makes the stars and suns shine."[4]
"There is a book published in 1829 by Thomas Dick entitled The Philosophy of a Future State. Joseph Smith owned a copy of the book and Oliver Cowdery quoted some lengthy excerpts from the book in the December 1836 Messenger and Advocate."[5]
These five claims share a single critical thesis: the Book of Abraham reads like a 19th-century product. The cosmology is too Newtonian, the prose is too King James, the place names are too modern, and the theology is too dependent on contemporaries Joseph could plausibly have read. Take the four claims together and the implied conclusion is that a 19th-century author — Joseph Smith — assembled the text from the materials of his own century, then projected it backward onto Abraham. This article examines that thesis against what the text actually says, what scholarship on the ancient Near East has uncovered since 1844, and what the chronology of Joseph Smith's revelations and library access actually allows.
A note on scope. This article focuses on the internal text of the Book of Abraham — its cosmology, KJV Genesis overlap, vocabulary, and the alleged Thomas Dick borrowing. The companion articles cover related but distinct ground: the Facsimiles article handles figure-by-figure interpretation of the three printed images, and the Papyri article covers the manuscript-source question (the Hor Breathing Permit, the Kirtland Egyptian Papers, the missing-scroll and catalyst theories). Where the issues overlap — the facsimile cross-references in Abraham 1:12, 14, or the catalyst theory's relevance to the source-text question — readers will find references in both directions.
Context and background
Three pieces of context shape any honest evaluation of these claims.
First, the Book of Abraham survives in multiple manuscript and printed forms produced over a roughly seven-year window. Joseph Smith began work on the Book of Abraham in July 1835, shortly after the Egyptian papyri and mummies arrived in Kirtland on 3 July 1835.[6] The Kirtland-era manuscripts (1835), the Nauvoo-era Times and Seasons publication (March and May 1842), and the 1851 Pearl of Great Price are all separate textual witnesses, and they differ from one another in places.[6:1] [7] When the article asks what "the Book of Abraham says," the answer is sometimes "it depends which manuscript you read" — a point that becomes important on the Egyptus / Zeptah question below.
Second, the relevant scholarly fields have moved enormously since 1844. Egyptian hieroglyphs were only deciphered in 1822 — three years before Joseph's birth — and serious Middle Egyptian scholarship was decades away in 1835.[8] Cuneiform decipherment was not declared a fait accompli until the famous 25 May 1857 Royal Asiatic Society experiment, thirteen years after Joseph's death.[9] The Apocalypse of Abraham was not available in English until 1898; the Book of Jubilees not until 1888; the Genesis Apocryphon not until 1956 (after its 1947 discovery in the Dead Sea Scroll caves).[10] [11] [12] The Naram-Sin inscription that mentions a Bronze-Age Anatolian site called Ulisum — a possible match for the Book of Abraham's Olishem — surfaced from the soil of Iraq in 1974 and was published in 1976.[13] The Idrimi statue, whose autobiographical-with-scribal-colophon genre offers an instructive parallel for the Book of Abraham's "by his own hand" superscription, was discovered in 1939.[14] None of this was available in 1835. This matters for any independent parallel that fits the text: each one needs a separate explanation on the fabrication theory, because none of the underlying evidence had yet been recovered.
Third, the structure of the Book of Abraham itself matters. Abraham 1 (idolatry, attempted human sacrifice, divine deliverance, Egyptian context) and Abraham 3 (cosmology, intelligences, premortal council) have no parallel in the King James Bible. They are the most distinctive content in the book. Abraham 2, 4, and 5 (Abraham's call, the creation account, the formation of man) overlap heavily with Genesis 1, 2, 11, and 12 — those are the chapters at issue in the "86% paraphrase" claim. So the structure of the criticism matters: the heaviest paraphrase clusters precisely where parallel content exists, and the most distinctive material (Abraham's biographical narrative and his cosmological vision) has no Genesis to copy from. That asymmetry recurs throughout the analysis below.
The Newtonian cosmology claim
The CES Letter, citing LDS scholar Keith Norman and former CES instructor Grant Palmer, argues that Abraham 3 reflects 19th-century Newtonian astronomy — a model now superseded by Einsteinian physics — and therefore reflects Joseph Smith's environment rather than Abraham's.[1:1] [15] The argument's force depends on the assumption that the only two interpretive options are (a) Newtonian or (b) post-Einsteinian. Once a third option — ancient cosmology — is on the table, the criticism's logic changes substantially.
What Abraham 3 actually describes
Abraham 3 does not describe a heliocentric, gravity-driven, infinite universe of the sort Newton, Laplace, and Thomas Dick taught. It describes a hierarchical, geocentric system grounded in observation:
"And the Lord said unto me: These are the governing ones; and the name of the great one is Kolob, because it is near unto me, for I am the Lord thy God: I have set this one to govern all those which belong to the same order as that upon which thou standest." (Abraham 3:3)
"And I, Abraham, had the Urim and Thummim, which the Lord my God had given unto me, in Ur of the Chaldees; And I saw the stars, that they were very great, and that one of them was nearest unto the throne of God; and there were many great ones which were near unto it." (Abraham 3:1–2)
The reference frame is explicit: "the earth upon which thou standest" (Abr. 3:3, 5–7). Hierarchy is determined by orbital period (one revolution of Kolob equals 1,000 earth years; Abr. 3:4) and by relative proximity to "the throne of God" (Abr. 3:9). There are no force laws, no inverse-square gravitation, no orbital mechanics. The text is observational and hierarchical — closer to ancient Babylonian, Egyptian, and Hebrew astronomy than to anything in Newton's Principia or Dick's Philosophy of a Future State.[16] [17]
Geocentric framing alone is not decisive — a 19th-century author writing in Abraham's voice could have deliberately used phenomenological language to fit the persona, and Joseph already showed in Helaman 12:15 that he understood the heliocentric/geocentric distinction.[18] The case for authenticity in this section turns not on the reference frame but on the more specific encircling-governance concept discussed below — the feature a 19th-century author would have had no model for.
The Egyptian "encircling = governing" concept
A more specific feature of Abraham 3 is the connection between proximity, encircling, and governance. In Egyptian cosmological thought, the circumpolar stars (ỉḫmw-sk, "those that do not perish") were imagined as encircling the celestial pole and were understood as governing or controlling lower celestial regions through that proximity.[19] Abraham 3:9 says Kolob "is set nigh unto the throne of God, to govern all those planets" — echoing the Egyptian conceit that encircling proximity is governance.[20]
Two qualifications belong here. Hierarchical celestial governance — higher bodies governing lower ones — also appears in Babylonian astrological texts, Greek cosmology, and Hellenistic Jewish writing, so a generic "higher governs lower" parallel by itself proves little.[21] What is harder to explain is the more specific feature: a hierarchy in which proximity to a divine throne is the operative principle, paired with language that treats encircling and governing as the same kind of relation. That combination is closer to the Egyptian ỉḫmw-sk concept than to anything in 19th-century natural theology. And the ỉḫmw-sk concept is preserved in Pyramid Texts and Coffin Texts whose systematic publication came decades after Joseph's death — the parallel, if it holds, is one Joseph could not have read about in any English-language source available to him.[22] [8:1]
"Borrows its light" as governance, not photons
The CES Letter's claim 7 isolates one phrase from the Facsimile 2 explanation: the sun "borrows its light from Kolob," which the CES Letter treats as a now-falsified mechanical claim about photon transfer.[4:1] Read as 21st-century stellar physics, the phrase is incompatible with what we know about thermonuclear fusion. Read in its own ancient idiom, the sentence is more naturally about hierarchical authority than physics.
In ancient Near Eastern thought, light often functions as a metaphor for governing influence or authority radiating from a higher to a lower order. The same metaphor appears throughout scripture: Christ as "the light of the world" (John 8:12), the "light of Christ" in D&C 88:7–13, the imagery of authority radiating from a king's throne. Facsimile 2's explanation operates within this metaphoric register: the sun "borrows" — receives delegated authority from — Kolob, which is "first in government."[20:1] [23]
It is fair to acknowledge that early Latter-day Saint sermons sometimes treated Abraham 3 in more physical terms — as describing literal cosmic geography rather than metaphoric governance hierarchy. The metaphoric reading is an interpretive choice, and it was not the only reading in 19th-century LDS reception. What it does reflect is the ancient idiom in which proximity, light, and authority routinely overlap.
For figure-by-figure analysis of Facsimile 2 — including the Semitic qlb etymology of "Kolob" ("heart, center, near") — see the Facsimiles article.
Comparison: three cosmological frames
| Feature | Newtonian (1687–1900) | Abraham 3 | Ancient Egyptian / Babylonian |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reference frame | Heliocentric / gravitational center | "the earth upon which thou standest" (Abr. 3:3, 5–7) | Geocentric, observational |
| Mechanism | Force laws (F = Gm₁m₂/r²) | Hierarchy by orbital period + proximity | Hierarchy by encircling + position |
| Primary descriptor | Mass, distance, acceleration | "Governing one," "set of stars," "borrows its light" | Encircling = governing (Egyptian ỉḫmw-sk) |
| Universe shape | Infinite, isotropic | Hierarchical, centered on "throne of God" | Hierarchical, centered on cosmic axis or polar god |
| Stars produce light by | Internal heat/gravitation (pre-fusion era theory) | "Borrow" relational language (governance) | Light as divine emanation |
Abraham 3 sits in column three rather than column one. The CES Letter's framing — that the only options are Newton or Einstein — omits the interpretive frame the text most naturally fits.
What is and isn't in the text
The cosmological case for Abraham 3's antiquity rests on what the text does not contain. A 19th-century author working with Dick, Chalmers, and a popular astronomy textbook would naturally produce (a) heliocentric mechanics, (b) gravitational language, and (c) infinite-universe imagery. None of these features appears in Abraham 3. What does appear — geocentric observation, hierarchy by proximity to a divine throne, "borrows light" as governance language — is not what 19th-century natural theology was producing.[16:1] [19:1] That is one independent line of evidence, by itself suggestive rather than decisive, that the text reads more like ancient cosmological prose than like an 1830s author imitating one.
The KJV Genesis overlap
The CES Letter's claim 5 is the most concrete textual claim in this cluster: 86% of Abraham 2, 4, and 5 — sixty-six of seventy-seven verses — closely parallels KJV Genesis 1, 2, 11, and 12.[2:1] [15:1] If the Book of Abraham is genuinely ancient, the CES Letter asks, why is so much of it phrased in seventeenth-century English?
The honest answer requires conceding the parallel and then explaining what it does and does not mean.
The actual figure
Sarah Allen, working through Palmer's count line by line, found that the precise figure is 64 of 77 verses, or roughly 83% — not 66 of 77 verses (86%) as Palmer reported.[24] The difference is small but real. Wikipedia's article on Book of Abraham criticism cites a different figure for a narrower scope — about 75 percent of the wording for chapters 4 and 5 alone — indicating that the precise figure depends on which chapters are in scope and how strict the "paraphrase" criterion is.[25]
What all credible counts agree on is that the parallel is substantial: at least three-quarters of Abraham 2, 4, and 5 closely tracks KJV Genesis. The textual relationship between Abraham 4–5 and Genesis 1–2 is real and warrants explanation rather than minimization.
Theological differences that matter
The "paraphrase" framing obscures what is happening underneath the surface vocabulary. Abraham 4–5 makes systematic, theologically weighty changes to Genesis 1–2 — and the changes are not random.
| Genesis 1 (KJV) | Abraham 4 |
|---|---|
| "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth" (Gen. 1:1) | "And then the Lord said: Let us go down. And they went down at the beginning, and they, that is the Gods, organized and formed the heavens and the earth" (Abr. 4:1) |
| "And God said, Let there be light" (Gen. 1:3) | "And they (the Gods) said: Let there be light" (Abr. 4:3) |
| "And God called the light Day" (Gen. 1:5) | "And the Gods called the light Day" (Abr. 4:5) |
| "And God made the firmament" (Gen. 1:7) | "And the Gods ordered the expanse, so that it should divide the waters" (Abr. 4:7) |
| "And God created man in his own image" (Gen. 1:27) | "And the Gods went down to organize man in their own image" (Abr. 4:27) |
Two patterns are systematic across all of Abraham 4. First, the divine subject is plural — "the Gods" — where Genesis renders the noun Elohim with singular verbs. Second, the verb of creation is "organized" rather than "created," reflecting a reading of Hebrew bārāʾ as to shape, form, set in order rather than to create from nothing.[26] These are doctrinal departures aligned with Joseph Smith's theology of plural Elohim and creation by organization rather than ex nihilo.[27]
Both readings — plural Elohim and bārāʾ as "organize" — have antecedents in modern Hebrew Bible scholarship that has progressively recognized them as authentically ancient. The grammatical tension between plural Elohim and singular verbs in Genesis 1 is one of the oldest interpretive puzzles in the Hebrew Bible; comparative work in Ugaritic, Hittite, and Babylonian literature in the twentieth century has clarified that an underlying divine council theology is real.[28] [29] Bārāʾ with the meaning "shape, form, set in order" is now widely defended; creatio ex nihilo is increasingly recognized as a Hellenistic-Jewish and early Christian theological development rather than a feature of the Hebrew text.[30] [31]
What was actually known in 1835
A careful skeptic will object that some of this material was, in fact, available in early-19th-century America. Adam Clarke's widely circulated commentary discussed the plural form of Elohim and noted a plurality-of-persons reading of Genesis 1.[32] The published Hebrew grammars Joshua Seixas used, and which Joseph encountered when his Hebrew study began in January 1836, treated the plural Elohim directly.[33] The strict claim that "Joseph could not have known" the plural-Elohim reading is too strong; what is more carefully defensible is that the reading was available in scholarly Hebrew commentary but not the natural rendering a casual reader of KJV Genesis would have produced.
The chronology requires care: the earliest Abraham manuscript work dates to 1835, predating Joseph's documented Hebrew study under Seixas by several months, while the published Times and Seasons version (1842) postdates that study by years. So the case is mixed — but what still requires explanation is systematicity. A casual reader exposed to Adam Clarke might preserve a singular "God" with occasional asides. Abraham 4–5 systematically renders every divine action plural and the creation verbs as "organized" rather than "created," in a sustained manner across both chapters. That distribution looks less like incidental exposure to Hebrew commentary and more like a translator (or revelator) treating the divine-council and bārāʾ-as-organize readings as the operative meaning of the underlying text.
Why KJV phrasing is expected, not damning
If revealed translation involves rendering ancient content into the language available to the translator, then KJV phrasing in revealed scripture is expected, not anomalous. This is the same model the Church and LDS scholarship now apply to the Book of Mormon, which paraphrases KJV English wherever parallel content exists — Isaiah passages, the Sermon on the Mount, and so on.[34] [35] The KJV-paraphrase argument cannot be deployed against the Book of Abraham without simultaneously indicting the Book of Mormon — which the CES Letter would not want to do.
The honest reader will note the symmetry cuts both ways: KJV register is consistent with both fabrication and revealed-translation models, so the surface-phrasing data discriminates between them only weakly. The argument for authenticity therefore does not rest on KJV register but on the systematic theological departures described above — plural Gods, bārāʾ as organize, divine council deliberation, premortal intelligences. The Joseph Smith Translation operates on the same principle: KJV as scaffolding, with revelatory adjustments at theologically significant points. The pattern in Abraham 4–5 is consistent with this — the baseline is recognizable KJV Genesis, and the modifications cluster at theologically distinctive points.[36] [37]
A source-critical complication
A more sophisticated version of the KJV-paraphrase objection deserves direct engagement. Modern Hebrew Bible scholarship divides Genesis 1–11 into multiple source strands (P, J, with later editorial combination). If the Book of Abraham is genuinely ancient and independent of Genesis as we have it, why does it follow precisely the redacted, late-edited form of Genesis 1 that emerged from the combination of those source strands — rather than reflecting an older or pre-redacted version?[38]
On a strict mechanical-translation model there is no fully satisfying answer. On the catalyst-theory or revealed-translation model, the response is more direct: the Book of Abraham reaches us through Joseph Smith's translation work, which used KJV Genesis (the only English form available to him) as the baseline language for parallel content.[39] This is the model the Gospel Topics Essay describes when it speaks of the papyri as "an occasion for meditation, reflection, and revelation."[40] That concession does not make the case for ancient material in the underlying content collapse — but it does mean the case must rest on features that survive translation (place names, theological structure, narrative motifs) rather than on surface phrasing.
The asymmetry the CES Letter omits
The 86% paraphrase figure applies to Abraham 2, 4, and 5. It does not apply to Abraham 1 or 3 — the chapters with the most distinctive and most foreign-sounding material in the book. Abraham 1 (idolatry rescue, Olishem geography, Egyptian context, attempted human sacrifice) and Abraham 3 (cosmology, intelligences, premortal council) have no Genesis parallel at all. The heaviest paraphrase clusters precisely where parallel content exists; the most distinctive content — the material a fabricator would have to invent without a textual model — has no KJV to copy from. That distribution is what we would expect of revelatory translation through familiar scriptural language. It is harder to reconcile with pure plagiarism, which would produce an even spread of KJV-derived content across the whole book.
The "anachronisms" — Chaldeans, Pharaoh, Egyptus
The CES Letter's claim 6 lists three terms in the Book of Abraham that critics consider anachronistic for the second-millennium-BC era of Abraham: Chaldeans, Pharaoh, and Egyptus.[3:1] Each requires a different response, and the honest answer in two of the three cases is that the term is probably retrojective. The strongest counter is not to defend every word as period-correct but to show that the same kind of scribal updating happens in Genesis without anyone concluding Genesis is a fabrication — and that the Book of Abraham contains positive geographic and cultural details that the fabrication hypothesis cannot easily account for.
Chaldeans — probably retrojective, in Genesis and the Book of Abraham alike
The earliest hard textual attestation of the kaldu (Chaldeans) is approximately the ninth century BC.[41] [42] Abraham's putative era — ranging across scholarly estimates from roughly 2200 to 1800 BC — predates that attestation by a millennium or more. So when Abraham 1:1 places Abraham "in the land of the Chaldeans," and when Genesis 11:31 says Terah departed "from Ur of the Chaldees," both texts are using a term that postdates Abraham's lifetime.
Stephen Smoot, the leading LDS scholar on this question, concedes the point: the textual appearance of the Chaldeans only in the Neo-Assyrian period would seem to indicate that their appearance in Genesis (and the Book of Abraham) is anachronistic, and as things stand the term remains a problem for the Book of Abraham's historicity — though, in his judgment, not a fatal one.[41:1] The term is best understood as a translator's retrojection — the same way Pharaoh, Philistines, and Dan in Genesis are translator's retrojections (see below). Ancient texts routinely use later, familiar place-names for events that predate those names; that is a feature of how scribal transmission works, not evidence of forgery. If the standard "anachronism = fabrication" applied consistently, Genesis itself would fail it.
What the Book of Abraham does get right is the underlying geography. Smoot's 2017 BYU Studies article makes the case for a northern Ur (in upper Syria/Mesopotamia, near Haran), not the famous southern Tell el-Muqayyar identified by Leonard Woolley in 1922.[41:2] [43] The northern-Ur thesis fits Genesis 11:31 (Terah and Abraham journey from Ur "to go into the land of Canaan; and they came unto Haran" — geographically coherent if Ur is in the north), the patriarchal traditions of Aram-naharaim and Paddan-aram for marriages and travel, and Pseudo-Eupolemus's Hellenistic Jewish account of Abraham's homeland. John Bright, the Princeton biblical historian, observed that the patriarchal traditions show little evidence of southern Mesopotamian influence.[44]
The result: the term is probably retrojective in both Genesis and the Book of Abraham, but the geography the Book of Abraham points to (a northern Ur, with cultural and trade connections to Egypt and northern Syria) is consistent with second-millennium-BC reality.
Pharaoh — title and personal name
"Pharaoh" as a regnal title for the king of Egypt — the Egyptian per-aa, "great house" — emerges as a designation for the ruler in the New Kingdom. Standard Egyptological reference works place the earliest confirmed use of per-aa for the king under the Eighteenth Dynasty, with the strongest evidence from a letter to Akhenaten (c. 1353–1336 BC) and possible earlier use under Thutmose III (c. 1479–1425 BC).[45] In strict Egyptological terms, calling an Old Kingdom or Middle Kingdom ruler "Pharaoh" is anachronistic. By that strict standard, Genesis 12:15 (Abraham's encounter with "Pharaoh" of Egypt), Genesis 39–50 (Joseph's interactions with "Pharaoh"), and the entire Pentateuch's use of Pharaoh for second-millennium-BC kings are all anachronistic. The same standard applies equally to Genesis: both texts come to us through scribal transmission and translation, both render the ruler's title using the term familiar to their later audience, and neither is a forgery on that basis.
There is a separate, harder point about how the Book of Abraham uses Pharaoh in a way Genesis does not. In Abraham 1:25, the text reads:
"Now the first government of Egypt was established by Pharaoh, the eldest son of Egyptus, the daughter of Ham."
Here Pharaoh functions as a personal/dynastic name — the eponymous founder of Egyptian rule — rather than as a regnal title.[46] There is no Egyptian dynastic king-list in which the founder is named "Pharaoh"; Manetho's Aegyptiaca lists Menes/Narmer as the founder of dynastic Egypt, not a figure called "Pharaoh." The apologetic literature points instead to the category of eponymous-founder traditions in ancient Near Eastern historiography (Mizraim/Egypt, Ham as the ancestor of African peoples in Genesis 10), in which a region or dynasty is traced to a named ancestor.[47] [48] The Book of Abraham's Pharaoh-as-founder fits that broader genre, but it is a defensible reconstruction within the eponymous-founder genre rather than a directly attested correspondence in Egyptian texts.
Egyptus — and the manuscript that says "Zeptah"
The "Egyptus anachronism" is the most nuanced of the three because the Book of Abraham's textual history matters here. The Kirtland-era manuscripts (1835) read "Zeptah" for Ham's wife and "Egyptes" (or Zep-tah) for their daughter. The 1842 Times and Seasons publication harmonizes both as "Egyptus."[49] [6:2] The published name Egyptus is etymologically Greek (from Aigyptos, ultimately from the Egyptian Hwt-ka-Ptah, a name for Memphis). But the Kirtland manuscripts give us a different earlier reading.
Zeptah is etymologically Egyptian: sꜣ Ptḥ, "son of Ptah," with the feminine equivalent sꜣ.t Ptḥ, "daughter of Ptah."[49:1] The "son of Ptah" / "daughter of Ptah" name pattern is well-attested in Egyptian onomastics over a long period, and the consonantal pattern sꜣ Ptḥ matches Middle Egyptian phonology with the s/z equivalence known. The most famous specific attestation — Siptah, the Nineteenth Dynasty pharaoh — comes from ~1200 BC, well after Abraham's putative era, so it is not a contemporary parallel; the pattern itself is attested across Egyptian history (including non-royal personal names) and would have been available for an Abraham-era Egyptian individual, even without a directly contemporary attestation.[50]
The honest assessment: the published "Egyptus" form is etymologically Greek-derived and therefore (read strictly) anachronistic to Abraham's era. The manuscript "Zeptah" form fits a documented Egyptian naming pattern. The CES Letter critiques the published form without engaging the manuscript evidence. This concession opens a real door — that the canonical published form has been editorially reshaped from an earlier manuscript reading — and the catalyst-theory and revealed-translation models accommodate that question by distinguishing what Joseph delivered as the published English text from what may stand behind it. The case for ancient material rests on the underlying content (place names, divine-council theology, narrative motifs) rather than on every detail of the published English text being unmediated.
How Genesis handles the same problem
The strongest single response to the anachronism cluster is to look at Genesis. The Hebrew Bible — accepted as authentically ancient by every form of biblical Christianity, including the CES Letter's implied frame — contains the same kinds of scribal updatings:
| Term | Where it appears | Anachronism |
|---|---|---|
| Pharaoh (as title) | Genesis 12, 39–50 | Title per-aa emerges ~1350 BC; used for Old/Middle Kingdom rulers (~2000 BC). |
| Chaldeans | Genesis 11:28, 31; 15:7 | First textual attestation ~9th century BC; used for Abraham's homeland (~2000 BC). |
| Philistines | Genesis 21, 26 | Philistine confederation arrived in the Levant ~12th century BC; used in patriarchal narratives. |
| Dan (as place name) | Genesis 14:14 | The city was renamed "Dan" only in the conquest period (Judges 18:29); used in Abraham's lifetime narrative. |
If Genesis can refer to "Pharaoh," "Chaldeans," "Philistines," and "Dan" by their later, familiar names without that proving fabrication, the same principle applies to Egyptus, Pharaoh, and Chaldeans in the Book of Abraham. Both texts come to us through scribal transmission, and Joseph Smith rendered both into English using familiar KJV-era vocabulary. The criticism, applied consistently, would dismantle the Bible too — and the same "anachronism = fabrication" inference is the structural logic the CES Letter applies to Book of Mormon anachronisms (horses, steel, barley) where, again, the inference does too much work to be consistently honored.[51] [37:1]
When the anachronism may vindicate the text — Olishem
Of the items in this article, the place name Olishem in Abraham 1:10 is the one most often cited as positive evidence. This is not a name from KJV Genesis. It does not appear in any 19th-century biblical commentary or historical work Joseph Smith could plausibly have read. It is unique to Abraham 1:10:
"...the priest of Elkenah was also the priest of Pharaoh. Now, at this time it was the custom of the priest of Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, to offer up upon the altar which was built in the land of Chaldea ... and also a god like unto that of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. ... The land of Ur, of Chaldea. ..." (Abr. 1:8–15, condensed)
"...the plain of Olishem." (Abr. 1:10)
Cuneiform was not deciphered until thirteen years after Joseph's death.[9:1] Once it was, scholars eventually published the inscriptions of Naram-Sin of Akkad (reigned c. 2254–2218 BC), who recorded a campaign against "Rish-Adad, prince of Armanum" in a region that included a site called Ulisum:
"From the very mouth of the Euphrates, he smote the river(-bank) as far as Ulisum, as well as the people whom Dagan had given to him for the first time."[52]
The Bassetki statue containing this inscription was found in northern Iraq in 1974 and published in 1976.[13:1] John M. Lundquist proposed the Olishem–Ulisum identification in 1985.[53] In 2013, Turkish excavators at Oylum Höyük (in modern Kilis Province, southeastern Turkey, near the Syrian border) identified that site with ancient Ulisum.[54] [55] Atilla Engin, the non-LDS archaeologist directing those excavations, has favorably noted the connection.
The Olishem case requires several steps to land. First, the phonetic correspondence between Olishem and Ulisum must hold (it is close, with standard Semitic sound correspondences). Second, Naram-Sin's Ulisum must in fact be at Oylum Höyük (this is Engin's identification, supported but not yet a settled scholarly consensus — the wider field has not weighed in extensively). Third, Naram-Sin's campaign region must plausibly be the geographic context the Book of Abraham describes (it is in northern Syria / southern Anatolia, consistent with the northern-Ur thesis). Each step is reasonable; chained together they produce a plausible identification rather than a definitive proof.
The BYU Studies authors describe the identification as supported but not yet settled.[54:1] That is the right framing. What is uncontested is that cuneiform was undeciphered in 1835 and the specific Naram-Sin inscription containing Ulisum came out of the ground in 1974. So if the identification holds, the Book of Abraham contains a place name pointing to a Bronze-Age Anatolian site that 20th-century archaeology recovered. That is one independent line of evidence in favor of ancient material in the text — by itself a single data point, but a non-trivial one given the chronology of cuneiform decipherment and the publication date of the Bassetki inscription.[56]
The facsimile cross-references in Abraham 1:12, 14
Abraham 1:12 reads: "I will refer you to the representation at the commencement of this record." Abraham 1:14 makes a similar reference to the figures in the facsimile. The CES Letter argues that these self-references are anachronistic because the surviving papyri are first-century-CE Egyptian funerary documents, not Abrahamic autographs.[3:2] (For the broader question of the relationship between the surviving Hor papyrus fragments and the Book of Abraham — including the missing-scroll, catalyst, and Semitic-adaptation theories that the Gospel Topics Essay treats as legitimate alternatives — see the Papyri article.)
This is a real interpretive puzzle that deserves an honest answer. Three readings have been offered:
Editorial framing by Joseph as inspired translator. The references reflect Joseph's role as the producer of the English text, pointing the reader to illustrations that accompany the published version. On this reading, the cross-references are like editorial markers rather than authorial signatures — a feature of how the book reaches us, not a statement about Abraham's autograph.
Catalyst-theory framing. The Gospel Topics Essay outlines a model in which "Joseph's study of the papyri may have led to a revelation about key events and teachings in the life of Abraham … The physical artifacts provided an occasion for meditation, reflection, and revelation."[40:1] On this model, the facsimiles served as a prompt for revealed content rather than a transparent ancient source. The cross-references in Abraham 1:12, 14 then make sense as features of the text-as-Joseph-produced-it, with editorial mediation built into the form of the book.
Late-redactive transmission. Genesis itself contains numerous editorial glosses ("which is Bethel," Gen. 28:19; "which is Hebron," Gen. 23:19) that postdate the patriarchal events they explain. If the Book of Abraham survives in late copies (analogous to the Genesis tradition reaching us through later scribes), editorial cross-references are a normal feature of ancient textual transmission.
Of these three, the catalyst-theory framing (reading 2) is the one this article works with for its narrative coherence and because the Gospel Topics Essay endorses it as one legitimate model. The Essay is careful, however, not to adjudicate between the catalyst model and a missing-scroll model — both are presented as viable readings of the textual evidence, and the Papyri article walks through the missing-scroll case in more detail. The broader question of what "translation" meant for Joseph Smith — and how the same 1830s sense of the term operates across the Book of Mormon, the Joseph Smith Translation, and the Book of Abraham — is treated in the Translator Claims article.
A skeptical reader will press: catalyst theory makes the apparent anachronism manageable — but at the cost of being unfalsifiable. Any apparent anachronism could be characterized as "the papyri prompted revelation"; any apparent ancient parallel could be characterized as "the underlying ancient material survives translation." That criticism has real force as a criticism of catalyst theory as a complete explanatory framework.[57] The article does not rely on catalyst theory to do the work of establishing ancient material — that case must rest on positive evidence that survives translation (place names, theological structure, narrative motifs), which the rest of this article aims to provide.
The Thomas Dick borrowing thesis
The CES Letter's claim 8 is the most specific environmental-influence argument: Joseph Smith owned a copy of Thomas Dick's Philosophy of a Future State (1829); Oliver Cowdery quoted Dick at length in the Messenger and Advocate (December 1836); and Klaus Hansen identifies parallels between Dick and the Book of Abraham — eternal matter, plural inhabited worlds, "intelligences," central throne-of-God cosmology.[5:1] [58] The implied argument: Joseph borrowed his cosmology from Dick.
The case has real force. The parallels Hansen identifies are not invented. The honest response requires conceding the parallels and then explaining why they do not establish dependence.
The parallels Hansen identified
Hansen's published list of parallels:
- Dick: matter is eternal and indestructible; rejection of creatio ex nihilo. — Joseph: "The elements are eternal" (D&C 93:33); "the Gods organized and formed the heavens and the earth" (Abr. 4:1); explicit rejection of ex nihilo in the King Follett discourse.[27:1]
- Dick: an infinity of stars, many populated by "various orders of intelligences" who progress toward perfection. — Joseph: stars/planets populated by intelligences in various stages (Abr. 3:18–19, 22–23).
- Dick: "the systems of the universe revolve around a common centre, the throne of God." — Joseph: Kolob "nearest unto the throne of God," with other stars in diminishing proximity (Abr. 3:9).
Hansen's verbal claim is modal: he wrote that the similarities "may be more than coincidental."[58:1] The CES Letter quotes the parallels without preserving Hansen's modal qualifier, which has the effect of making Hansen sound more confident than he was.
Where Dick and Abraham systematically contradict
Edward T. Jones, in the only book-length scholarly comparison of Dick's and Joseph Smith's theologies (BYU MA thesis, 1969), studied ten volumes of Thomas Dick's writings and concluded that Joseph rejected most of what Dick believed most strongly while affirming what Dick most opposed — an inverse pattern that, in Jones's words, is hard to reconcile with substantial dependence.[59]
Jones's specific theological contrasts:
| Topic | Thomas Dick | Joseph Smith / Book of Abraham |
|---|---|---|
| Nature of matter | Created ex nihilo by divine decree | "The elements are eternal" (D&C 93:33); creation by organization (Abr. 4:1) |
| Nature of God | "A spiritual uncompounded substance, having no visible form" | "The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man's" (D&C 130:22) |
| Comprehensibility of God | "For ever incomprehensible to all limited intelligences" | "It is the first principle of the Gospel to know for a certainty the Character of God" (Joseph) |
| Spirit and matter | Mind and matter distinct (dualism) | "There is no such thing as immaterial matter. All spirit is matter" (D&C 131:7) |
| Number of Gods | Strict monotheism | Plural Elohim — "the Gods organized..." (Abr. 4–5) |
| Premortal humans | Not present in Dick's framework | Premortal intelligences who become embodied (Abr. 3:22–23) |
| Divine perfectibility of humans | Rejected | Asserted ("As man now is, God once was") |
The pattern is striking. On the topics where Dick had the most invested — strict monotheism, immaterial spirit, incorporeal God, ex nihilo creation, the impossibility of human deification — Joseph systematically went the opposite direction. People do not normally borrow whole frameworks from sources they invert at every fundamental point. The historian Erich Robert Paul reached a similar conclusion: the similarities are too few to support Brodie's strong borrowing thesis, and Joseph likely did not benefit significantly from Dick's ideas as a primary source.[60] [61]
A skeptic can grant this and still hold a softer version of the borrowing thesis: Joseph could have selectively borrowed specific tropes (intelligences, throne-of-God hierarchy, eternal matter, plurality of inhabited worlds) without buying Dick's framework. The Jones/Paul argument refutes pure-Dick-derived theology; it does not by itself refute selective borrowing within an inverted framework. So what remains, after the systematic theological opposition is acknowledged, are the surface parallels: eternal matter, intelligences, hierarchical cosmos. The cumulative observation is that the parallels are precisely where Dick is least original — these were ambient ideas in 19th-century natural-theology writing (Chalmers, Watts, Pope, and many others). To establish Dick-specific borrowing requires more than thematic overlap with material that was widely available across the era.[62]
The chronology of the eternal-matter doctrine
The hardest fact for a strong borrowing thesis is the chronology of Joseph Smith's eternal-matter doctrine. Doctrine and Covenants 93 was given 6 May 1833 and contains "The elements are eternal, and spirit and element, inseparably connected, receive a fulness of joy" (D&C 93:33).[27:2] Oliver Cowdery quoted Thomas Dick at length in the Messenger and Advocate in December 1836 — three and a half years later.[63] Joseph's library inventory does establish that he eventually owned a copy of Dick's Philosophy of a Future State, but the inventory does not document when he acquired it.[62:1]
The chronology argument has real force, with limits a skeptic will properly note: Dick's book was published in 1829 and widely circulated in antebellum America, leaving a four-year window before D&C 93 in which Joseph or any of the leading brethren could have encountered Dick's ideas through intermediaries.[64] What the chronology establishes is that the dependency direction the strong borrowing thesis requires — Dick directly into Joseph's revelations — is hard to demonstrate from the documentary record. Against the softer version of the thesis — that Joseph integrated Dick-style tropes ambient in his cultural milieu — the case for Joseph's intellectual independence rests less on chronology and more on the systematic theological inversions tabulated above.
What borrowers actually do
If Joseph were borrowing wholesale from Dick to construct the Book of Abraham, the result should look like 19th-century natural theology. In Dick's framework, the cosmos is heliocentric, gravitational, and infinite; God is incorporeal and incomprehensible; spirit is immaterial; humans are utterly contingent and are not candidates for divine nature. None of those features appears in the Book of Abraham. Instead the book gives us a geocentric reference frame, a hierarchical cosmos with encircling-governance language tied to ancient Egyptian astronomy, an embodied deity, eternal matter, and premortal intelligences progressing toward divine likeness. The features the CES Letter alleges Joseph borrowed from Dick are precisely the features that show up in ancient sources Dick himself did not access — divine council in Ugaritic and Hebrew, plural Elohim in Genesis 1, hierarchical Egyptian astronomy, premortal souls in the Apocalypse of Abraham and other pseudepigrapha. The pattern is more consistent with revealed translation through familiar 19th-century English vocabulary than with Dick-derived borrowing.[59:1] [60:1]
The historiography has caught up with this pattern. Benjamin Park, summarizing the present consensus among more recent LDS-history scholars, treats the direct link to Dick as tenuous and notes that the relevant ideas could have come from the broader cultural milieu rather than Dick specifically.[65] John L. Brooke, who in The Refiner's Fire (1994) extends Brodie's borrowing thesis, himself acknowledges that other contemporary sources besides Dick may have been involved.[66] Even the strongest version of the borrowing case has retreated from the confident "Joseph plagiarized Dick" framing the CES Letter implies.
The honest middle position is the one Hansen actually articulated: parallels yes, direct dependence not established. May be more than coincidental.
Strongest critical arguments
This article would be incomplete without engaging the strongest version of each critical position — including positions the CES Letter does not articulate.
The Hauglid reorientation
The most significant intra-LDS scholarly challenge to traditional Book of Abraham interpretation comes from Brian M. Hauglid. Hauglid co-edited (with Robin Scott Jensen) the 2018 Joseph Smith Papers volume on the Book of Abraham, and he co-authored, with Terryl Givens, The Pearl of Greatest Price: Mormonism's Most Controversial Scripture (Oxford University Press, 2019).[7:1] [6:3] Both publications mark a shift in his published views toward a more critical assessment of the Book of Abraham as an ancient document in any straightforward sense. Hauglid has documented his own evolution in print, including in a 2020 Dialogue essay tracing his changing views on Joseph Smith's translation method.[67] In The Pearl of Greatest Price and his Dialogue essay, Hauglid engages the broader question of whether the Book of Abraham is ancient at all in the sense traditional faithful readings have assumed — characterizing his position as "a debate over translation method only" would understate what changed.
Hauglid's critical reorientation does not by itself dissolve the positive-evidence case for ancient material in the text. The place-name correspondences, the theological structures, and the narrative motifs that survive in the published Book of Abraham are evidence the underlying material has ancient features — independent of which scholarly view of "translation" one adopts. John S. Thompson's response to Givens and Hauglid in Interpreter (2020) argues that the LDS tradition's understanding of "translation" is broader than the strict mechanical model and accommodates the manuscript and historical evidence without requiring Hauglid's level of critical reorientation.[35:1] Both views are within active LDS scholarly engagement; the article does not have to settle which is correct to maintain that the cumulative ancient-parallel evidence is independent of either position.
Robert Ritner's Egyptological case
Robert K. Ritner of the University of Chicago (d. 2021) was the most credentialed living non-LDS Egyptologist who engaged the Book of Abraham critically. His The Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri: A Complete Edition (Smith-Pettit Foundation, 2011/2013) and his published response to the LDS Church's 2014 Gospel Topics Essay are the most rigorous Egyptological criticisms of the book.[68] [69]
Ritner's strongest claims fall mostly in the territory of the Facsimiles and Papyri articles. On the issues this article covers, two of his points are most relevant:
The papyri-Abraham gap. Ritner argued that the Book of Abraham could not have come from the surviving Hor Breathing Permit fragments, which contain only a small portion of intact text bearing no relation to Abraham; on his reading, most of the Book of Abraham would have to be invented rather than translated from those lines.[68:1] If the surviving papyri have no textual relationship to the Book of Abraham, then the catalyst-theory or revealed-translation models become more important — and Ritner regarded those models as ad hoc accommodations.
The Genesis-paraphrase pattern. Ritner read the heavy KJV-Genesis paraphrase in Abraham 4–5 as evidence of dependence on Genesis rather than independent ancient material. On the strict-textual reading, this is correct — and the article has already conceded that surface parallel.
Ritner's primary expertise is Egyptian translation, and his most aggressive critiques fall on the papyri-translation question rather than on the broader question of ancient material in the text. Kevin Christensen's lengthy Interpreter response to Ritner (60+ pages) engages those critiques in detail.[70] On the issues this article covers — Olishem, divine council, Idrimi-style genre, Apocalypse of Abraham parallels — Ritner did not write extensively, and they require specialists in Akkadian, Hebrew Bible, Ugaritic, and pseudepigrapha rather than Egyptology alone.[54:2] [26:1] Each parallel stands or falls on its own merits, evaluated in the sections that follow.
Tvedtnes's etymologies have critics
Stephen E. Thompson's 1995 Dialogue article "Egyptology and the Book of Abraham" challenges several of Tvedtnes's etymological reconstructions — for Shagreel, Mahmackrah, Shinehah, and others — on phonological and morphological grounds.[42:1] The article presents Tvedtnes's etymologies in the next section; it does so without claiming that all of them are equally well-supported. Some are relatively secure (Akkadian kakkab / Hebrew kôkāb for Kokaubeam). Others are more speculative and have received pushback (the Sokar + El reconstruction for Shagreel; the specific šn + nhh for Shinehah). Tvedtnes's catalog is cumulative evidence — some entries are stronger than others, the overall pattern of Egyptian and Semitic correspondences is more striking than any individual reconstruction, and individual entries are open to specialist debate.
What we honestly don't know
Several questions remain genuinely open and the article will not pretend otherwise:
The exact mechanism of translation. The traditional faithful model treats Joseph as rendering an ancient document; the catalyst-theory model treats the papyri as a prompt for revelation; revisionist models treat the text as more loosely connected to ancient sources. The Gospel Topics Essay endorses a flexible framing that accommodates both the missing-scroll and catalyst models.[40:2]
The status of Abraham 1:12, 14's facsimile cross-references. Multiple frameworks — catalyst theory, late-redactive transmission, missing-scroll reading — can accommodate the cross-references. Each requires giving up a strict mechanical-translation model.
The strength of individual parallel claims. The Olishem identification is supported but not yet a settled scholarly consensus. The Egyptian ỉḫmw-sk parallel is suggestive but rests on a specific reading of cosmological imagery that some specialists would parse differently. The Idrimi-style "by his own hand" colophon is a documented ancient genre, but it is a generic genre that includes texts unrelated to Abraham.[71] [72]
Kevin Barney's J-redactor / Semitic-adaptation hypothesis. Barney has proposed that the Book of Abraham reached Joseph in a form already adapted by a Hellenistic-Egyptian Jew who modified Egyptian visual material to fit a Jewish narrative.[73] This is scholarly speculation rather than established fact; the article notes it as one available framing without resting on it.
The exact position of Ur of the Chaldees. The northern-Ur thesis (Smoot 2017) is the most defensible reading on present evidence, but the question of Ur's exact location remains debated. FAIR's own discussion concedes this: "the question of Ur's exact location remains open."[74]
These open questions affect interpretation of the Book of Abraham. They do not by themselves settle the case in either direction. Honest acknowledgment that not every detail is settled is part of what makes the positive case credible where it is strong.
Evidence supporting Church truth claims
The CES Letter's case for fabrication is a historical claim: that a 19th-century author produced a text reflecting his environment. The cleanest test of any such claim is whether the text contains specific, falsifiable details that the proposed environment cannot supply. The Book of Abraham contains several lines of independent evidence — not a single proof, but several distinct features each of which would be hard to explain on a strict 1830s-fabrication model.
A note on method. What follows are independent lines of evidence, each evaluated on its own merits. The argument is not that "stacking parallels multiplies confidence." Each parallel has independent epistemic risk: any one could be coincidence, generic genre, or an artifact of how scribal transmission and translation work. The point of presenting several is that each requires a separate naturalistic explanation on the fabrication theory, and the available naturalistic explanations weaken when the same author would need to have produced multiple distinct features each with independently obscure origins.
Olishem / Ulisum — cuneiform Joseph couldn't have read
The Olishem identification, treated above, is one independent line of positive evidence on its own merits — a plausible (not yet proven) match between Abraham 1:10 and an Akkadian inscription that 20th-century archaeology recovered, with the supporting cuneiform decipherment, Bassetki publication (1976), and Oylum Höyük field identification (2013) all postdating Joseph Smith.[54:3]
Egyptian and Semitic etymologies
John Tvedtnes's catalog of Book of Abraham names with possible ancient parallels is, taken cumulatively (and with the Thompson 1995 caveats above), evidence the fabrication thesis has to absorb.[75]
| BoA name | Reference | Ancient parallel | When parallel became available |
|---|---|---|---|
| Olishem | Abr. 1:10 | Akkadian Ulisum, Naram-Sin inscription (~2250 BC) | Cuneiform deciphered ~1857; Bassetki inscription published 1976; Oylum Höyük identified 2013 |
| Zeptah (Kirtland mss) | Abr. 1:23 | Egyptian sꜣ Ptḥ ("son of Ptah"); fem. sꜣ.t Ptḥ | Egyptian decipherable from 1822; specialized Egyptological work later |
| Elkenah | Abr. 1:6 | Hittite Elkunirsha / Phoenician El qōneh ʾrṣ | Phoenician El qn 'rs (Karatepe) discovered 1946; Hittite Elkunirsha published 20th c. |
| Mahmackrah | Facs. 1, fig. 7 | Possible link to Akkadian Mamihirat (contested — see Thompson 1995) | Identified in deity list 1950 |
| Shagreel | Abr. 1:9 ("the sun") | Egyptian Sokar + Semitic El (Tvedtnes; contested) | Specialist reconstruction |
| Kolob | Abr. 3:9; Facs. 2 | Semitic qlb ("heart, center, near"); see Facsimiles | Semitic root knowable; the cosmological-governance reading is later |
| Kokaubeam | Abr. 3:13 ("stars") | Hebrew kôkābîm; Akkadian cognate kakkab; Eblaite ~2400 BC | Hebrew knowable; Akkadian post-1857; Eblaite post-1964 |
| Shinehah | Abr. 3:13 ("the sun") | Egyptian šn (encircle) + nhh / heh (eternity) (Tvedtnes; contested) | Modern Egyptological reading |
| Raukeeyang | Facs. 1, fig. 12 | Hebrew rāqîaʿ "firmament" with non-standard transliteration | Hebrew knowable; Joseph's Hebrew study began January 1836 |
Tvedtnes summarizes that the names with arguable ancient correspondences far outnumber those for which no etymology can be established at present, suggesting coincidence is an improbable explanation.[75:1] The honest qualification is that "arguable correspondence" varies in strength entry by entry — some etymologies are well-supported, others are contested. The pattern matters more than any single entry: the names cluster in Abraham 1, the chapter with no Genesis parallel and therefore no template a forger could lean on. Constructing a name like Elkenah that maps to the Hittite-Phoenician El-kunirsha / El qōneh ʾrṣ deity from the resources available in 1835 Ohio is, on the documented record, hard to explain.[76]
Ancient Abrahamic narrative parallels
The Book of Abraham's distinctive narrative content — Abraham 1's idolatry rescue, attempted human sacrifice, divine deliverance; Abraham 3's astronomical vision and divine throne theophany — has no parallel in KJV Genesis. But it does have specific parallels in extracanonical ancient Abrahamic literature, almost all of which was unavailable in English in 1835.
Apocalypse of Abraham (1st–2nd century AD; Hebrew or Aramaic original; survives in Slavonic). First popular English translation by E. H. Anderson and R. T. Haag in Improvement Era (1898); standard scholarly: G. H. Box and J. I. Landsman, 1918.[10:1] Specific parallels to Abraham 1–3:
- Father Terah's idolatry (Apoc. Ab. 1–8; cf. Abr. 1:5–7)
- Idolatrous priests / attempted human sacrifice (Apoc. Ab. 1; cf. Abr. 1:7)
- Divine deliverance by an angel (Apoc. Ab. 8; cf. Abr. 1:15–16)
- Vision of the cosmos and divine throne (Apoc. Ab. 18–22; cf. Abr. 3:1–10)
- Abraham as astronomer (Apoc. Ab. 6–7; cf. Abr. 3:11–18)[77]
A skeptical caveat is appropriate: while no formal English translation of the Apocalypse of Abraham was published before 1898, motifs from the Apocalypse were referenced in earlier scholarly Latin and German treatments and in references in 19th-century Bible commentaries. The strict claim "the Apocalypse was completely unavailable to Joseph" is harder to defend than "the Apocalypse was not available in formal English translation in 1835." That weaker claim is what the documentary evidence supports.
Book of Jubilees (~150 BC; Hebrew original; survives in Ge'ez). First English translation: G. H. Schodde, 1888; standard scholarly: R. H. Charles, 1902.[11:1] Parallels: Terah's idolatry and Abraham's rejection (Jub. 11–12); Abraham as astronomer (Jub. 12:16–18); famine driving Abraham from Mesopotamia (Jub. 13).
Genesis Apocryphon (Aramaic, ~1st c. BC). One of the original seven Dead Sea Scrolls discovered 1947; editio princeps by Avigad and Yadin, 1956.[12:1] Parallels: Abraham's journey with Sarai through Egypt (cols. 19–20); Abraham as astronomer/visionary (cols. 19, 22).
Pseudo-Eupolemus (~3rd c. BC, preserved in Eusebius's Praeparatio Evangelica). States that Abraham was a Chaldean astronomer who taught the Egyptians astronomy after migrating to Egypt — exactly the role Abraham plays in Abraham 3 and Facsimile 3.[78] (This is the parallel Joseph could in principle have read, since Eusebius was available in 19th-century editions; it is the weakest of the four for the "couldn't have known" framing, though the specific Pseudo-Eupolemus fragment was not widely commented upon.)
The compilation edited by Tvedtnes, Hauglid, and Gee — Traditions about the Early Life of Abraham (FARMS 2001) — gathers over a hundred ancient and medieval Abraham texts in original languages and translation, including Pseudo-Philo, Tanna debe Eliyahu, Pirqe de Rabbi Eliezer, Genesis Rabbah, Sefer ha-Yashar, the Qur'an's Abraham material, and Falasha texts.[79] Most were unavailable in English in 1835, and many were unavailable in any printed form until the twentieth century.
The narrative-parallel argument: across this body of ancient literature, recurring motifs cluster around the Book of Abraham's distinctive content — Terah's idolatry, attempted sacrifice, Abraham's astronomical knowledge, his teaching of Egyptians, deliverance by an angel — that simply do not appear in Genesis. The Book of Abraham contains non-Genesis tradition that the rest of ancient Judaism preserved separately. A fabrication built from KJV Genesis alone could not produce this distribution. For these same parallels framed against Facsimile 1's sacrifice scene specifically, see the Facsimiles article.
Genre conventions Joseph couldn't have known
The Book of Abraham's introductory line is "The Book of Abraham, written by his own hand, upon papyrus." This formula matches an ancient literary genre — first-person royal/heroic autobiography with scribal colophon — that twentieth-century archaeology recognized as a documented ancient form.
The Idrimi statue, discovered by Sir Leonard Woolley at Tell Atchana (ancient Alalakh) in 1939, contains a 104-line cuneiform inscription on the statue base recording Idrimi of Alalakh's autobiography in the first person, with a closing colophon naming the scribe Sharruwa.[14:1] [71:1] Idrimi's "by my own hand"-style colophon, and the broader genre of first-person autobiographical inscriptions with scribal colophons, was archaeologically rediscovered nearly a century after Joseph Smith's death. The Book of Abraham's superscription is not anomalous in light of Idrimi; it fits a documented ancient Near Eastern convention.[72:1] (The genre is a generic ancient form that includes many texts unrelated to Abraham — so the parallel is one of category fit rather than a unique correspondence.)
Human sacrifice in Egyptian context
Abraham 1:7–15 narrates priests of Pharaoh attempting to sacrifice Abraham on a stone altar in an Egyptian-influenced cultic setting. Nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century Egyptology denied that human sacrifice occurred in ancient Egypt at all, and used this denial as evidence that the Book of Abraham's setting was implausibly fabricated.[80] [81] Modern archaeology has flatly contradicted the denial — most importantly through the Mirgissa execration deposit, excavated by French Egyptologist Jean Vercoutter at the Middle Kingdom Egyptian fortress of Mirgissa in northern Sudan during the 1962–1969 archaeological campaigns.[82] The deposit included thousands of ceramic shards from inscribed and uninscribed red vases, hundreds of mud figurines, four limestone figures, melted red-dyed beeswax (likely figurines), a flint knife — and a decapitated human body, identified as a foreigner, slain in an execration ritual to ward off Egypt's enemies.[83] [84]
Additional Middle Kingdom evidence is documented by Muhlestein and Gee, including a Thirteenth Dynasty boundary stele from Abydos prescribing burning as the punishment for trespassing on sacred space — exactly the era Abraham 1 evokes — and Middle Kingdom royal inscriptions recording the ritual execution of foreigners.[83:1]
The 19th-century skeptics were factually wrong about whether the underlying setting (foreign worshippers, idolatrous priests, attempted human sacrifice on an altar in a Middle Kingdom Egyptian context) was plausible. Twentieth-century excavation has shown that it was. The Book of Abraham's setting fits the archaeological evidence better than its early critics' denials — though it is honest to note that vindicating the setting is not the same as confirming the text of the Book of Abraham. For the same evidence framed against Facsimile 1's altar scene specifically, see the Facsimiles article.
"The Gods organized" and divine council
The systematic theological departures of Abraham 4–5 — plural Gods and bārāʾ as "organized" — were treated above (see "The KJV Genesis overlap"). Two lines of additional support are worth noting briefly here:
The grammatical tension between plural Elohim and singular verbs in Genesis 1, treated above as "one of the oldest interpretive puzzles in the Hebrew Bible," has been substantially clarified by twentieth-century comparative work in Ugaritic, Hittite, and Babylonian sources, which has made the underlying divine council theology — sons of God deliberating with the chief deity — visible across the ancient Near East.[28:1] [29:1] Mark S. Smith's The Origins of Biblical Monotheism and Michael Heiser's work on the Hebrew divine council represent the present scholarly mainstream.[31:1]
Bārāʾ as "organize" rather than "create from nothing" is similarly a modern recovery. Gerhard May's Creatio ex Nihilo (1994) traced creatio ex nihilo to Hellenistic Jewish and early Christian polemic, not the Hebrew text of Genesis 1.[30:1]
The Book of Abraham systematically applies both readings — plural divine subject and bārāʾ as organize — across the entire creation account, in 1835 manuscripts that pre-date Joseph's documented Hebrew study by months. A skeptic can rightly note that Adam Clarke's commentary discussed the plural form of Elohim and was widely circulated.[32:1] [33:1] What remains harder to explain on the casual-reader thesis is the systematic application of these readings across both chapters of the Abraham creation account, before Joseph had any documented exposure to formal Hebrew study. That is one of the items the fabrication thesis has to absorb rather than an inevitable feature of an 1830s author's environment.
Assessment
The CES Letter's source-text and anachronism case is, on close inspection, partly correct and largely overstated.
The honest concessions: Chaldeans is probably retrojective in the Book of Abraham, the same way it is retrojective in Genesis 11. The KJV-paraphrase parallel in Abraham 2, 4, and 5 is real and substantial — at least 75%, probably 83% by Sarah Allen's recalculation, with 86% being the high end on the loosest paraphrase definition. The published "Egyptus" form is etymologically Greek-derived and reflects later editorial harmonization. Abraham 1:12 and 1:14's facsimile cross-references are textual features that any honest reading must accommodate, and the most coherent accommodations — catalyst theory, late-redactive transmission, and missing-scroll reading among them — all require giving up a strict mechanical-translation model. Brian Hauglid's reorientation toward a more critical view of the Book of Abraham as an ancient document is a real scholarly development from inside the LDS academy. Robert Ritner's Egyptological case is the strongest non-LDS academic critique. None of this is denied here.
What the CES Letter's framing misses, omits, or distorts is what surfaces once the scholarship is engaged at depth. Genesis itself contains the same kinds of scribal updatings — Pharaoh, Chaldeans, Philistines, Dan — without anyone concluding Genesis is a fabrication. The "anachronism = fabrication" inference, applied consistently, would dismantle the Hebrew Bible. The KJV-paraphrase argument, applied consistently, would indict the Book of Mormon's Isaiah passages and Sermon on the Mount paraphrases — though the article also acknowledges that the KJV-paraphrase pattern is consistent with both fabrication and revealed-translation models, so it is best understood as a wash on the historicity question. Sarah Allen's corrected count is 83%, not 86%; small but characteristic of how the CES Letter's numbers can drift toward the strongest impression. Hansen's modal qualifier ("may be more than coincidental") matters: he himself was not asserting confident dependence. D&C 93:33's eternal-matter doctrine (May 1833) is documented to predate any documented Joseph Smith engagement with Thomas Dick (December 1836), placing significant pressure on a strong dependency model. The systematic theological contrasts between Dick and Joseph — on every fundamental point Dick took most seriously — are inconsistent with wholesale borrowing, even if a softer selective-borrowing thesis remains a coherent skeptical position.
And the positive case includes several independent lines of evidence, each of which is hard to explain on a strict 1830s-fabrication model. Olishem arguably maps to Akkadian Ulisum, attested in cuneiform inscriptions deciphered after Joseph's death and excavated at Oylum Höyük in 2013 — the identification supported, though not yet a settled consensus. The Egyptian encircling = governing concept, the divine-council reading of Genesis 1 (with the caveats about Adam Clarke availability), the Idrimi-style autobiographical genre, the Apocalypse of Abraham parallels, and the Mirgissa execration evidence for Egyptian human sacrifice are all features that 20th-century scholarship would recognize as authentically ancient. Most of the underlying evidence postdates Joseph Smith by decades or centuries. A 19th-century author working with KJV Genesis, contemporary popular astronomy, and Thomas Dick should produce zero post-1835 hits. The Book of Abraham contains several arguable hits, none of them individually decisive, but each requiring its own naturalistic explanation on the fabrication theory.
The Book of Abraham is not the cleanest faith-defending case in the Church's scriptural canon. The textual history is messier than the Book of Mormon's, the manuscript variants are real, the Chaldeans concession is honest, and the catalyst-theory and revealed-translation models require holding a less mechanical view of "translation" than older traditions sometimes assumed. Where the questions are hard, the article has tried to name them rather than dodge them.
The cumulative case is evidence the fabrication thesis must reckon with. Several independent features of the Book of Abraham — an Akkadian place name, an Egyptian governance concept, a Hebrew divine council, an Idrimi-style genre, ancient pseudepigraphal Abraham traditions, an archaeologically attested Egyptian execration setting, and a theology that systematically inverts Joseph's most plausible 19th-century source — each have to be absorbed somehow on the fabrication theory. The parts that resist easy accommodation (Olishem, Apocalypse parallels, encircling-governance, divine council, Idrimi genre, plural Elohim) are the parts the fabrication thesis has the harder time supplying from Joseph's documented environment. None of these alone is decisive. Together they shift the balance of the case in favor of authenticity to the extent that the parallels are independently credible.
The Book of Mormon remains the scriptural anchor — produced in roughly sixty working days, with no substantive revisions, no whistleblowers, and no credible naturalistic explanation, and with steadily strengthening positive evidence. The Book of Abraham's case is denser, more technical, and more textured. But on its own merits it contains specific features that 20th-century recovery has progressively confirmed.
Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Book of Abraham," no. 4, p. 46. ↩︎ ↩︎
Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Book of Abraham," no. 5, p. 47. ↩︎ ↩︎
Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Book of Abraham," no. 6, pp. 47–48. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Book of Abraham," no. 7, p. 48. ↩︎ ↩︎
Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Book of Abraham," nos. 8, pp. 48–49. ↩︎ ↩︎
Robin Scott Jensen and Brian M. Hauglid, eds., The Joseph Smith Papers, Revelations and Translations, Volume 4: Book of Abraham and Related Manuscripts (Salt Lake City: Church Historian's Press, 2018); see editorial introduction at https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/intro/introduction-to-revelations-and-translations-volume-4. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Terryl Givens with Brian M. Hauglid, The Pearl of Greatest Price: Mormonism's Most Controversial Scripture (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019). ↩︎ ↩︎
Jean-François Champollion, Lettre à M. Dacier (Paris, 1822); the founding text of modern Egyptology. ↩︎ ↩︎
University of Hamburg CSMC, "The Decipherment of Cuneiform Writing," https://www.csmc.uni-hamburg.de/publications/mesopotamia/2015-05-08.html (canonical date for the 25 May 1857 Royal Asiatic Society fait accompli). ↩︎ ↩︎
G. H. Box and J. I. Landsman, The Apocalypse of Abraham (London: SPCK; New York: Macmillan, 1918), https://archive.org/details/apocalypseofabra00boxg. First popular English translation by E. H. Anderson and R. T. Haag was published in Improvement Era (1898). ↩︎ ↩︎
R. H. Charles, The Book of Jubilees (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1902), https://archive.org/details/bookofjubileesor00char. First English translation by G. H. Schodde appeared in 1888. ↩︎ ↩︎
Nahman Avigad and Yigael Yadin, A Genesis Apocryphon: A Scroll from the Wilderness of Judaea (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1956); the editio princeps of the Genesis Apocryphon (1QapGen), one of the original seven Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in 1947. ↩︎ ↩︎
Abdul-Hadi al-Fouadi, "Bassetki Statue with an Old Akkadian Royal Inscription of Naram-Sin of Agade (B.C. 2291–2255)," Sumer 32 (1976): 63–76; Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative entry, https://cdli.earth/publications/1662919. ↩︎ ↩︎
Sir Leonard Woolley, "Excavations at Tell Atchana," Antiquaries Journal 19 (1939): 1–37; British Museum, Statue of Idrimi (1939,0613.101), https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/W_1939-0613-101. ↩︎ ↩︎
Grant H. Palmer, An Insider's View of Mormon Origins (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2002), pp. 19, 25. ↩︎ ↩︎
Stephen O. Smoot, John Gee, Kerry Muhlestein, and John S. Thompson, "Abrahamic Astronomy," BYU Studies Quarterly 61, no. 4 (2022), https://byustudies.byu.edu/article/abrahamic-astronomy. ↩︎ ↩︎
John Gee, William J. Hamblin, and Daniel C. Peterson, "'And I Saw the Stars': The Book of Abraham and Ancient Geocentric Astronomy," in Astronomy, Papyrus, and Covenant (Studies in the Book of Abraham, vol. 3, Provo, UT: FARMS, 2005), https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/mi/14/. ↩︎
Helaman 12:15: "And thus, according to his word the earth goeth back, and it appeareth unto man that the sun standeth still; yea, and behold, this is so; for surely it is the earth that moveth and not the sun." Book of Mormon (1830 ed.). ↩︎
Kerry Muhlestein, "Encircling Astronomy and the Egyptians: An Approach to Abraham 3," Religious Educator 10, no. 1 (2009); chapter version reprinted in By Study and by Faith: Selections from the Religious Educator, ed. Richard Neitzel Holzapfel and Kent P. Jackson (Provo, UT: BYU Religious Studies Center, 2009), https://rsc.byu.edu/study-faith/encircling-astronomy-egyptians-approach-abraham-3. ↩︎ ↩︎
Stephen O. Smoot, John Gee, Kerry Muhlestein, and John S. Thompson, "Kolob, the Governing One," BYU Studies Quarterly 61, no. 4 (2022), https://byustudies.byu.edu/article/kolob-the-governing-one. ↩︎ ↩︎
Kevin Christensen, "Eye of the Beholder, Law of the Harvest: Observations on the Book of Abraham," Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 10 (2014): 175–238, https://interpreterfoundation.org/journal/eye-of-the-beholder-law-of-the-harvest/. Christensen offers a 60+ page response to Ritner-style critiques and discusses comparative ancient cosmology. ↩︎
Allen, James P., The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts, 2nd ed. (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2015), historical introduction. Pyramid Text excavations under Maspero began at Saqqara in 1881, with initial transcriptions appearing in Recueil de Travaux from the 1880s onward; standard scholarly editions emerged in the 20th century (Sethe 1908–1922; Allen 2005/2015). ↩︎
Michael D. Rhodes, "The Joseph Smith Hypocephalus … Twenty Years Later," FARMS Preliminary Report (1997), discussing the "Light of Christ" (D&C 88:7–13) framework for hierarchical light/governance language. ↩︎
Sarah Allen, "The CES Letter Rebuttal — Part 18," FAIR (20 October 2021), https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/blog/2021/10/20/the-ces-letter-rebuttal-part-18. ↩︎
Wikipedia, "Criticism of the Book of Abraham," https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_Book_of_Abraham. The article cites about 75 percent of the wording from KJV Genesis 1–2 for Book of Abraham chapters 4 and 5 specifically (a narrower scope than Palmer's chapters 2, 4, 5 count). ↩︎
Stephen O. Smoot, "Council, Chaos, and Creation in the Book of Abraham," Journal of the Book of Mormon and Other Restoration Scripture 22, no. 2 (2013): 28–39, https://scripturecentral.org/archive/periodicals/journal-article/council-chaos-and-creation-book-abraham. ↩︎ ↩︎
Doctrine and Covenants 93:33–35: "The elements are eternal, and spirit and element, inseparably connected, receive a fulness of joy." Revelation given 6 May 1833. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/dc-testament/dc/93. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Mark S. Smith, The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel's Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). ↩︎ ↩︎
Michael S. Heiser, "The Divine Council in Late Canonical and Non-Canonical Second Temple Jewish Literature" (PhD diss., University of Wisconsin–Madison, 2004); Heiser, The Unseen Realm (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2015). ↩︎ ↩︎
Gerhard May, Creatio ex Nihilo: The Doctrine of "Creation Out of Nothing" in Early Christian Thought, trans. A. S. Worrall (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994). ↩︎ ↩︎
Daniel C. Peterson, "'Ye Are Gods': Psalm 82 and John 10 as Witnesses to the Divine Nature of Humankind," in The Disciple as Scholar: Essays on Scripture and the Ancient World in Honor of Richard Lloyd Anderson, ed. Stephen D. Ricks, Donald W. Parry, and Andrew H. Hedges (Provo, UT: FARMS, 2000), pp. 471–594. ↩︎ ↩︎
Adam Clarke, The Holy Bible … with a Commentary and Critical Notes, 8 vols. (London: J. Butterworth and Son, 1810–1826), commentary on Genesis 1:1, discussing the plural form of Elohim and a plurality-of-persons reading. Clarke's commentary was widely circulated in antebellum America. See discussion in Haley Wilson and Thomas Wayment, "A Recently Recovered Source: Rethinking Joseph Smith's Bible Translation," Journal of Undergraduate Research (BYU, 2017). ↩︎ ↩︎
Matthew J. Grey, "'The Word of the Lord in the Original': Joseph Smith's Study of Hebrew in Kirtland," in Approaching Antiquity: Joseph Smith and the Ancient World, ed. Lincoln H. Blumell, Matthew J. Grey, and Andrew H. Hedges (Provo, UT: BYU RSC, 2015), https://rsc.byu.edu/approaching-antiquity-joseph-smith-ancient-world/word-lord-original-joseph-smiths-study-hebrew-kirtland; "Certificate from Joshua Seixas, 30 March 1836," Joseph Smith Papers, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/certificate-from-joshua-seixas-30-march-1836/1. ↩︎ ↩︎
Royal Skousen, "The Original Language of the Book of Mormon: Upstate New York Dialect, King James English, or Hebrew?" Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 3, no. 1 (1994): 28–38; Skousen, "Translating the Book of Mormon: Evidence from the Original Manuscript," in Book of Mormon Authorship Revisited, ed. Noel B. Reynolds (Provo, UT: FARMS, 1997). ↩︎
John S. Thompson, "'We May Not Understand Our Words': The Book of Abraham and the Concept of Translation in The Pearl of Greatest Price," Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 41 (2020): 1–48, https://interpreterfoundation.org/journal/we-may-not-understand-our-words-the-book-of-abraham-and-the-concept-of-translation-in-the-pearl-of-greatest-price/. ↩︎ ↩︎
"King James Bible Language," Debunking-CESLetter, https://debunking-cesletter.com/the-book-of-abraham-1/king-james-bible-language/. ↩︎
"Detailed Response to CES Letter, Book of Abraham," FAIR, https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/answers/Detailed_response_to_CES_Letter,_Book_of_Abraham. ↩︎ ↩︎
Richard Elliott Friedman, Who Wrote the Bible?, 2nd ed. (San Francisco: HarperOne, 1997). Standard treatment of the Documentary Hypothesis and the redacted form of Genesis 1–11. ↩︎
This response involves a genuine concession: the Book of Abraham as published is not a transparent window into a particular ancient source-text. It reaches the modern reader through Joseph Smith's translation work, which involved English language framed by KJV idiom — which is why the English translator's role is what produces the tracking with redacted Genesis. The underlying ancient material may or may not have followed that exact form. The catalyst-theory and revealed-translation models accommodate this distinction; a strict mechanical-translation model does not. ↩︎
"Translation and Historicity of the Book of Abraham," Gospel Topics Essays, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics-essays/translation-and-historicity-of-the-book-of-abraham. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Stephen O. Smoot, "'In the Land of the Chaldeans': The Search for Abraham's Homeland Revisited," BYU Studies Quarterly 56, no. 3 (2017): 7–37, https://byustudies.byu.edu/article/in-the-land-of-the-chaldeans-the-search-for-abrahams-homeland-revisited. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Stephen E. Thompson, "Egyptology and the Book of Abraham," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 28, no. 1 (Spring 1995): 143–160, https://www.dialoguejournal.com/articles/egyptology-and-the-book-of-abraham/. ↩︎ ↩︎
C. Leonard Woolley, Ur of the Chaldees (London: Ernest Benn, 1929; revised editions 1938, 1950, 1982). Later editions remove explicit Abraham identification; see also "Ur of the Chaldees," FAIR, https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/answers/Book_of_Abraham/Anachronisms/Ur_of_the_Chaldees. ↩︎
John Bright, A History of Israel, 3rd ed. (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1981), pp. 92–93. ↩︎
Donald B. Redford, ed., The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt, 3 vols. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), s.v. "Pharaoh"; cf. also Wikipedia, "Pharaoh," https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharaoh, summarizing Erik Hornung and Redford on the title's history. The earliest unambiguous use of per-aa for the king appears in a letter to Akhenaten (c. 1353–1336 BC); possible earlier use under Thutmose III (c. 1479–1425 BC). ↩︎
This is the harder version of the Pharaoh criticism and worth naming candidly. The Book of Abraham's use of Pharaoh as a personal name (rather than a regnal title) has no directly attested Egyptological correspondence — Manetho's Aegyptiaca lists Menes/Narmer as the founder of dynastic Egypt, not a figure called "Pharaoh." What is defensible is that the category of eponymous-founder traditions in ancient Near Eastern historiography (Mizraim/Egypt, Ham as the ancestor of African peoples in Genesis 10) does include figures whose name doubles as the name of the region or dynasty they founded. The Book of Abraham's Pharaoh-as-founder fits that broader genre even though no Egyptian source independently confirms a personal name "Pharaoh." ↩︎
"Detailed Response to CES Letter, Book of Abraham" (FAIR), section on Pharaoh, https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/answers/Detailed_response_to_CES_Letter,_Book_of_Abraham; Pearl of Great Price Central, "Pharaoh," https://pearlofgreatpricecentral.org. ↩︎
John Stokes, "The Hamites: The Pre-Restoration Monotheism of the Children of Ham in the Book of Abraham," Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 56 (2023), https://interpreterfoundation.org/journal/the-hamites-the-pre-restoration-monotheism-of-the-children-of-ham-in-the-book-of-abraham/. Discusses the Hamite/Egyptian/Chaldean cluster and engages the eponymous-founder genre in ancient Near Eastern historiography. ↩︎
Stephen O. Smoot, John Gee, Kerry Muhlestein, and John S. Thompson, "Zeptah and Egyptes," BYU Studies Quarterly 61, no. 4 (2022), https://byustudies.byu.edu/article/zeptah-and-egyptes. ↩︎ ↩︎
The most famous specific attestation of a name reflecting sꜣ Ptḥ is Siptah, the Nineteenth Dynasty pharaoh — but his reign (~1200 BC) is well after Abraham's putative era, so he is not a contemporary parallel, only a later instance of the same naming pattern. The honest reading is that sꜣ Ptḥ / sꜣ.t Ptḥ names of this category are attested across Egyptian history (including non-royal personal names), so the pattern would be available for an Abraham-era Egyptian individual, but a directly contemporary attestation is not on hand. ↩︎
Mormon Challenges, "Why are there Anachronisms in the Book of Abraham? Should be Expected," https://mormonchallenges.org/2013/02/05/anachronisms-book-of-abraham-challenge-7/. ↩︎
Translation from al-Fouadi, "Bassetki Statue" (1976); cited in Smoot, Gee, Muhlestein, and Thompson, "The Plain of Olishem," BYU Studies Quarterly 61, no. 4 (2022). ↩︎
John M. Lundquist, "Was Abraham at Ebla? A Cultural Background of the Book of Abraham," in Studies in Scripture, Volume 2: The Pearl of Great Price, ed. Robert L. Millet and Kent P. Jackson (Salt Lake City: Randall Book, 1985), pp. 225–237. The founding identification of Olishem with Akkadian Ulisum. ↩︎
Stephen O. Smoot, John Gee, Kerry Muhlestein, and John S. Thompson, "The Plain of Olishem," BYU Studies Quarterly 61, no. 4 (2022), https://byustudies.byu.edu/article/the-plain-of-olishem. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎
Atilla Engin, excavation reports from Oylum Höyük (Kilis Province, Turkey, 2013–); summary in Smoot et al., "The Plain of Olishem." ↩︎
"The Plain of Olishem," Pearl of Great Price Central, https://pearlofgreatpricecentral.org/olishem/. ↩︎
Catalyst theory is not meant to function as a one-stop solution to every difficulty — its role is as a framework for thinking about the translation process, not as a universal solvent for textual problems. The case for ancient material in the text must rest on positive evidence that survives translation: features that would be hard to invent regardless of mechanism. That is what the place-name, theological-structure, and narrative-motif arguments in the rest of this article aim to provide. ↩︎
Klaus J. Hansen, Mormonism and the American Experience (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), pp. 79–80, 110. ↩︎ ↩︎
Edward T. Jones, "The Theology of Thomas Dick and Its Possible Relationship to that of Joseph Smith" (MA thesis, Brigham Young University, 1969), https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/4839/. ↩︎ ↩︎
Erich Robert Paul, Science, Religion, and Mormon Cosmology (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992). ↩︎ ↩︎
"Parallels to Thomas Dick's Writings," Debunking-CESLetter, https://debunking-cesletter.com/the-book-of-abraham-1/parallels-to-thomas-dick-writings/. ↩︎
"Thomas Dick's The Philosophy of a Future State," FAIR, https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/answers/Thomas_Dick’s_The_Philosophy_of_a_Future_State; "The Book of Abraham and Thomas Dick's Philosophy of a Future State," FAIR, https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/answers/The_Book_of_Abraham_and_Thomas_Dick's_Philosophy_of_a_Future_State. ↩︎ ↩︎
Oliver Cowdery, "Letter from O. Cowdery to W. W. Phelps," Messenger and Advocate 3, no. 3 (December 1836): 423–25. ↩︎
The chronology doesn't establish full independence from Dick — absence of documented engagement before December 1836 is not the same as absence of any engagement, and the 1829–1833 window leaves four years in which Cowdery or any of the leading brethren could have encountered Dick's ideas through intermediaries before the May 1833 revelation. The Cowdery quotation in 1836 is consistent with Dick-as-confirmatory or Dick-as-prior-influence; the chronology alone doesn't fully decide between them. What it does establish is that the strong borrowing thesis — Dick directly into Joseph's revelations — is hard to demonstrate from the documentary record. ↩︎
Ben Park, "Joseph Smith, Thomas Dick, and the Tricky Task of Determining Influence," Juvenile Instructor blog, https://juvenileinstructor.org/joseph-smith-thomas-dick-and-the-tricky-task-of-determining-influence/. ↩︎
John L. Brooke, The Refiner's Fire: The Making of Mormon Cosmology, 1644–1844 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). ↩︎
Brian M. Hauglid, "'Translating an Alphabet to the Book of Abraham': Joseph Smith's Mature Translation Method," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 53, no. 4 (Winter 2020): 5–35. ↩︎
Robert K. Ritner, The Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri: A Complete Edition (Salt Lake City: Smith-Pettit Foundation, 2011/2013). ↩︎ ↩︎
Robert K. Ritner, "'Translation and Historicity of the Book of Abraham' — A Response," 2014; PDF hosted at https://isac.uchicago.edu/sites/default/files/uploads/Translation and Historicity of the Book of Abraham.pdf (University of Chicago Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures); also available via Institute for Religious Research, https://mit.irr.org/translation-and-historicity-of-book-of-abraham-response. ↩︎
Kevin Christensen, "Eye of the Beholder, Law of the Harvest: Observations on the Book of Abraham," Interpreter 10 (2014): 175–238, https://interpreterfoundation.org/journal/eye-of-the-beholder-law-of-the-harvest/. ↩︎
British Museum object record W_1939-0613-101, Statue of Idrimi, https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/W_1939-0613-101; see also "Statue of Idrimi," Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statue_of_Idrimi. ↩︎ ↩︎
John Gee, "Abraham and Idrimi," Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 22, no. 1 (2013): 34–39, https://scripturecentral.org/archive/periodicals/journal-article/abraham-and-idrimi. ↩︎ ↩︎
Kevin Barney, "The Facsimiles and Semitic Adaptation of Existing Sources," in Astronomy, Papyrus, and Covenant (Studies in the Book of Abraham, vol. 3, Provo, UT: FARMS, 2005); Scripture Central archive, https://scripturecentral.org/archive/books/book-chapter/facsimiles-and-semitic-adaptation-existing-sources. ↩︎
"Ur of the Chaldees," FAIR, https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/answers/Book_of_Abraham/Anachronisms/Ur_of_the_Chaldees. ↩︎
John A. Tvedtnes, "Authentic Ancient Names and Words in the Book of Abraham and Related Kirtland Egyptian Papers," 2005 FAIR Conference, https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/conference_home/august-2005/authentic-ancient-names-and-words. ↩︎ ↩︎
John Gee and Stephen D. Ricks, "Historical Plausibility: The Historicity of the Book of Abraham as a Case Study," in Historicity and the Latter-day Saint Scriptures, ed. Paul Y. Hoskisson (Provo, UT: BYU RSC, 2001), pp. 63–98, https://rsc.byu.edu/historicity-latter-day-saint-scriptures/historical-plausibility-historicity-book-abraham-case-study. ↩︎
Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, David J. Larsen, and Stephen T. Whitlock, "Moses 1 and the Apocalypse of Abraham: Twin Sons of Different Mothers?" Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 38 (2020): 179–290, https://journal.interpreterfoundation.org/moses-1-and-the-apocalypse-of-abraham-twin-sons-of-different-mothers/. Detailed scholarly comparison of the Apocalypse of Abraham and Joseph Smith's Abrahamic material. ↩︎
Pseudo-Eupolemus, fragment preserved in Eusebius of Caesarea, Praeparatio Evangelica 9.17.2–9; English translation in Edwin Hamilton Gifford, Eusebii Pamphili Evangelicae Praeparationis Libri XV (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1903). ↩︎
John A. Tvedtnes, Brian M. Hauglid, and John Gee, eds., Traditions about the Early Life of Abraham (Provo, UT: FARMS, 2001), https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/T/bo3648094.html. ↩︎
W. M. Flinders Petrie, Religion and Conscience in Ancient Egypt (London: Methuen, 1898), denying systematic human sacrifice in Egyptian religion; representative of 19th–early 20th-century Egyptological consensus later overturned. ↩︎
James Henry Breasted, A History of Egypt from the Earliest Times to the Persian Conquest (New York: Scribner, 1905), expressing skepticism about Egyptian human sacrifice as part of his broader characterization of Egyptian religion. ↩︎
Jean Vercoutter, "Textes exécratoires de Mirgissa," Comptes rendus des séances de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres 107, no. 1 (1963): 97–102; Vercoutter, "Trois campagnes de fouilles à Mirgissa (1962–1965)," in Kush (Khartoum: Sudan Antiquities Service, 1966); the deposit was excavated across the 1962–1969 archaeological campaigns directed by Vercoutter at the Middle Kingdom fortress of Mirgissa. ↩︎
Kerry Muhlestein and John Gee, "An Egyptian Context for the Sacrifice of Abraham," Journal of the Book of Mormon and Other Restoration Scripture 20, no. 2 (2011): 70–77, https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/jbms/vol20/iss2/6/. ↩︎ ↩︎
Stephen O. Smoot, John Gee, Kerry Muhlestein, and John S. Thompson, "Human Sacrifice," BYU Studies Quarterly 61, no. 4 (2022), https://byustudies.byu.edu/article/human-sacrifice. ↩︎