Review
Title: Revelations and Translations, Volume 4: Book of Abraham and Related Manuscripts
Editors: Robin Scott Jensen and Brian M. Hauglid
Publisher: Church Historians Press
Genre: Documentary History
Year Published: 2018
Number of Pages: 448
Binding: Cloth
ISBN13: 978-1629724805
Price: $89.99
Reviewed by Andrew Hamilton for the Association for Mormon Letters
On October 5, 1967 the following notes were made in President David O McKay’s diary about a meeting of the LDS First Presidency:
“President Tanner reported that Dr. Atiya of the University of Utah has made arrangements with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City for the Church to obtain possession of the Book of Abraham parchment which they now have in their possession, from which the Book of Abraham was translated. President Tanner explained that Dr. Atiya had been trying for some time to acquire this papyrus for the Church and had expected to exchange some other artifacts for it, that he has now received word that the museum will contribute the parchment to the Church without cost.”[1]
The return of these once-thought lost papyri to the LDS Church in 1967 started off decades of curiosity, research, and controversy about the most intriguing and enigmatic writings produced by Joseph Smith and led to the production just over 50 years later of Revelations and Translations, Volume 4: Book of Abraham and Related Manuscripts.
Like the previous volumes in the Joseph Smith Papers series, Revelations and Translations Volume Four starts with an amazing introduction. The introduction to this volume not only contextualizes the book itself, it also does a fantastic job of laying down the milieu for the world of Joseph Smith and the fascination with Egyptian documents and artifacts that existed when he started the Latter-day Saint movement. This information, given under the heading “The Rediscovery of Ancient Egypt,” sucked me right into the book and made it nearly impossible to put down (I say NEARLY impossible because the things is a monstrous 12.2 x 9.5 x 1.2 inches and weighs nearly 5 pounds and needs to be put down occasionally just to rest the arms!). It tells of how “Western culture was enthralled” with Egypt during the lifetime of Joseph Smith (p xvi), explains the rolls of individuals such as Napoleon Bonaparte and Jean-Francois Champollion, and describes the “enthusiasm Americans showed for mummies” when Smith purchased the Egyptian artifacts from Michael Chandler (p. xvii). It also details the understanding or lack thereof that Smith and others had of the Egyptian language at that time and lays out the case that Chandler likely went to Kirtland, Ohio with the specific goal in mind of selling his Egyptian collection to Smith and his followers.
A few other important items are laid out right away in the introduction to this volume. Joseph Smith believed, and based statements he made, something most Latter-day Saints since his time have believed — that the mummies and papyri purchased from Chandler had direct ties to Abraham. Scholarship since the papyri’s rediscovery in 1967 has shown that the fragments now owned by the LDS Church are, instead, Egyptian funerary texts and are from closer to the time of Christ than the assumed time of Abraham. The very first page of this volume establishes that the papyri purchased and “translated” by Smith do indeed date from between 300 and 100 BCE (p. xiii) rather than the 2000ish BCE time frame that Abraham would have lived in. The introduction also provides additional context to Joseph Smith’s efforts in creating the Book of Abraham by describing what is known about his use of the seer stones with the gold plates, giving Smith’s description of revelation as an intellectual and spiritual process, giving relevant information about his Bible “translation” methods, and writing about the production by Smith and his associates of the Egyptian language, grammar, and alphabet documents, and the publication history of the Book of Abraham (pp. xxii-xxix). Even without the other contextualizing documents in the book, this introduction is an important work of scholarship and an amazing addition to the understanding of what the LDS owned Egyptian papyri and the Book of Abraham created by Joseph Smith are.
I am probably beginning to sound repetitive with the superlatives, but the contents of this volume are, quite frankly: Boffo! Socco! Amazing! Wowzers! Included in its pages are full color photographs and transcriptions of all of the known surviving papyri fragments, the Egyptian Language documents created in the “translation” process by Smith and his assistants, images of the carvings and plates used to print the facsimiles, and pictures of the early published versions of the Book of Abraham. These photographs are not only high resolution and full color, they were created and enhanced with multispectral imaging technology that render readable words on the original documents that are no longer visible to the naked eye. At the end of the volume, in the supplemental materials portion of the book, in a section called “Comparison of Characters,” there are detailed, individual photographic images of every character on the papyri with a key detailing where each figure can be found, its sound, and a definition of what the symbol means. If all of that wasn’t cool enough, this volume contains the usual maps, chronologies, etc. that are included in each of the Joseph Smith Papers volumes.
I happen to know that this volume is being reviewed for professional, theological, historical, and apologetic publications by people with advanced degrees in biblical literature and individuals who specialize in writing about LDS scripture and theology. I have none of those qualifications or experience. I am merely a job counselor and part time English professor with a fascination for history and book fetish. I cannot hope to provide the detailed analysis of Volume Four’s contents or explain its importance and its potential historical and theological impact on Mormonism in general and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in particular in the way that they can. But I do want to give my reactions to some of this book’s contents and tell why I think that it is one of the most important volumes (and that is saying a lot) in the Joseph Smith Papers series.
Every copy of the “Book of Abraham” as found in the “Pearl of Great Price” distributed by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints starts with this statement:
“A Translation of some ancient Records that have fallen into our hands from the catacombs of Egypt. The writings of Abraham while he was in Egypt, called the Book of Abraham, written by his own hand, upon papyrus”[2].
A slight variation of this same statement was included by Joseph Smith when he first published the Book of Abraham in installments in 1842 in the Times and Seasons[3]. It is also included in the “History of the Church” Volume 2[4]. The following version is found in the Kirtland Egyptian Papers which are a part of Volume 4:
“Translation of the Book of Abraham written by his own hand upon papyrus and found in the catacombs of Egypt” (p. 219).
We can be assured that this statement represents Joseph Smith’s belief as to what he thought the papyri he obtained from Michael Chandler were. The idea that Joseph Smith believed that the papyri were directly connected to Abraham is strengthened by this statement from a letter written by WW Phelps. Phelps wrote to his wife Sally that Joseph Smith “knew what they [the papyri] were and said they…contained the sacred record kept by Joseph in Pharaoh’s Court in Egypt, and the teachings of Father Abraham” (p. 191). From 1842 until the release of the LDS Church’s Gospel Topics Essay on the Book of Abraham in 2014[5], this belief that the papyri were connected to Abraham was, to my understanding, as close as anything to an “official” position of the LDS church and was the position taught and believed by leaders, church members, and many apologists. Even when non-Mormon scholars and Egyptologists began to put forth the position after 1967 that the surviving fragments were funerary texts and had no connection to the biblical figure Abraham, many members of the LDS church continued to cling to the traditional idea that the papyri were, as Joseph Smith had said, produced by the biblical patriarch.
Right off the top, Revelations and Translations, Volume 4 puts to rest any notion that the surviving papyri fragments are anything other than what scholars and Egyptologists have been saying that they are for some time. The first document examined in this book is named “Fragment of Book of Breathing for Horus–A, between 328 and circa 153 BC.” The full color images of this document will immediately be recognized by Latter-day Saints as “Facsimile Number One” from the Book of Abraham and the accompanying papyrus fragment. The introduction for “Facsimile Number One” as Joseph Smith called it states that “This papyrus fragment, which is now in two pieces, comes from the Book of Breathing for Horus.” It goes on to explain that the image that Latter-day Saints have traditionally believed to be “Abraham fastened upon an altar” as he is about to be sacrificed by “The idolatrous priest of Elkenah”[6] is in actuality the Egyptian god Anubis attempting to reanimate a corpse (p. 8). The second document is also identified as a “Fragment of Book of Breathings for Horos” and is said to be filled with “spells for protection from decay, for a functioning body, and for eternal life” (pp.10-11). The other surviving pieces are identified as “Fragments of Book of the Dead for Semminis circa 300-100 BC” and “Fragments of Book of the Dead for Nefer-ir-nebu, circa 300-100 BC” (see pp. 12-21). As with the Book of Horos these documents are described as being filled with a variety of spells. I am aware of many people who, like me, were raised on the idea that these pieces of papyrus had a direct connection to Abraham and Joseph. I know a man, and active Latter-day Saint, who, based on the earlier mentioned quote from the Pearl of Great Price, keeps images of papyrus framed on his wall believing this gives him a connection to these biblical patriarchs. I may be way off, but I see the admission in this volume that these documents are Egyptian writings for the dead and not Abrahamic documents as potentially having a dramatic impact on many members of the LDS Church. To me this represents a major shift in the position that was put forth for so long by the Church.
Another very important item addressed in Revelations and Translations Volume 4 is the image known to Latter-day Saints as “Facsimile Number 2.” This is the round image with larger characters in the middle surrounded by much smaller figures. Joseph Smith identified some of these images and characters as being related to “Kolob,” “God on his throne,” and items that were not to be revealed at this time or that could only be revealed in the temple[7]. Since no surviving papyrus fragments exist for this “Facsimile” it is addressed in the end of Volume Four when the copies of the images made under the direction of Joseph Smith are discussed. The familiar “Facsimile” is here identified as an Egyptian “hypocephalus” that was “traditionally placed beneath the head of a deceased person for burial.” The “Historical Introduction” to the hypocephalus explains that while Joseph Smith’s descriptions of the figures were called a “translation” they are, in fact, “not, however, scholarly translations or explanations of the ancient Egyptian characters on the vignettes and the hypocephalus” (see page 276). As with the explanations about “Facsimile Number One” and the descriptions of the papyrus fragments indeed being an Egyptian Book of the Dead, I see this as a major shift in understanding for most Latter-day Saints. It will be very interesting to see what impact the scholarship in Revelations and Translations Volume 4 will have on Latter-day Saints around the world and to see the directions that it causes the teachings of the Church to go for the years to come.
Along with being wowed by the scholarship about the Egyptian documents in Volume 4, I had one major impression as I read through the many transcriptions in this book. I realize, of course, that others may completely disagree with me, but I want to share the impression that I had. The largest collection in Volume 4 consists of the documents known collectively as the “Kirtland Egyptian Papers,” These are the documents that Joseph Smith and his companions and associates created as he attempted to decipher the Egyptian characters and render them into English. As I read the transcriptions of these various notebooks, Egyptian Character, Alphabet, Counting, and Grammar documents, and then finally the Kirtland era Book of Abraham Manuscripts, I could see the development and progression of the story and teachings that became the final “Book of Abraham” as well as the beginnings of teachings that Joseph Smith more fully explored and taught during the Nauvoo period. I cannot say what this development means. I imagine that, to the “apologists” and active Latter-day Saints, the development seen in these documents is the “revelatory process” and shows that Joseph Smith was learning and receiving “line upon line, precept upon precept.” Those who do not believe in Joseph Smith may read them and see him refining a story from rough draft to final form. I can’t say and won’t guess here which would be right. I will just say that as you read these transcriptions, you see the story eventually published by Joseph Smith as “The Book of Abraham” in the Times and Seasons develop from early ideas and fragments to full-fledged story and you see the development of Nauvoo era Mormon doctrines begin to take shape.
Jensen and Hauglid not only put an amazing level of detail in this book, they have, in some places, included an amusing level of detail. One of the entries in this volume is the remains of a piece of paper from the “Egyptian Alphabet Documents,” It is titled “Scrap, circa July-circa November 1835” (pp. 101-103). This irregularly shaped scrap of paper is 6 to 9 cm high by 20 cm long and has one word on it: “Kolob,” The “Source Note” for this one-word scrap of paper is about 96 words long. Its “Historical introduction” is another 64 words. Plus, it gets four footnotes that add another 80 plus words. That’s close to 250 words to describe a one-word scrap of paper!
In the production of this volume Jensen and Hauglid have done their homework and they’ve done it well. The “Works Cited” takes up seven very large pages filled with very small type. The articles and sources that fill these pages and are cited in the book are diverse, scholarly, and many are quite recent. When I say “recent” I mean very recent. Among the cited sources are Thomas Wayment’s “Intertextuality and the Purpose of Joseph Smith’s New Translation of the Bible”[8] published earlier in 2018 and Wayment and Haley Wilson’s “A Recently Recovered Source: Rethinking Joseph Smith’s Bible Translation”[9] that was referenced in early 2018 on BYU’s Journal of Undergraduate Research website and currently awaiting being fully published by the University of Utah Press. Other important volumes cited in this volume include Robert K. Ritner’s “The Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri: A Complete Edition” and several translations and works by Michael D. Rhodes, most of which are easily available online and all of which make great companions to this volume.
I only have two minor complaints about Revelations and Translations, Volume 4. First, as I alluded to earlier: This. Book. Is. HUGE! It measures in at 12.2×9.5×1.25 inches. But, despite this rather large size, the text in the essays, source notes, and historical introductions is fairly small. In each of these sections of the book the margins are, in my opinion, really large, being two inches on each side. I’m sure that there were good reasons for this layout, and I understand trying to keep the cost and size of the book down, but my aging eyes would be happy to pay a few more dollars if necessary for larger type and smaller margins. My second minor gripe relates to an explanation in one of the footnotes. Pages 276 to 283 are about the document “Explanation of Facsimile 2, circa 15 March 1842,” The description given at that time for figure number 11 is “{i}f the world can find out these n[u]mbers, so mote it be” (p. 281, emphasis mine, all other brackets and symbols as found in Volume 4). The word “mote” is followed by endnote number 115. When you go to that note it reads “An archaic phrase meaning ‘so may it be.’ (See ‘Mote’ in Oxford English Dictionary, 6:689.)” (p. 292, emphasized phrase in italics in original). While this is an accurate definition of the word “mote,” it is not a complete description of what the word means. “Mote” was always, by my research and knowledge, used in a Masonic context. Given Joseph Smith’s involvement with the Masons in 1842 and the Masonic connections to the introduction of the LDS temple ceremonies and the stated connections by Smith between the symbols on Facsimile Number 2 and the temple, to not state in the note that there is a likely Masonic connection with this use of the word “mote” seems odd and not fully accurate to me.
At some point in Junior Sunday School I was taught to sing a song meant to get the wiggles out. It went something like this: “Father Abraham had seven sons, and seven sons had Father Abraham, and they never laughed, and they neve cried, all they did was…” and then you would shake a foot or wave an arm or do a happy dance. I have no idea just how many “sons” Father Abraham could be said to have had at this point, but I can say this: anyone with an interest in Mormon studies, the work and mission of Joseph Smith, or the Book of Abraham has been given a reason to do a happy dance thanks to the publication of Revelations and Translations, Volume 4: Book of Abraham and Related Manuscripts and the fantastic scholarly work of Robin Jensen and Brian Hauglid. The investment price is a little high at $89.99, but the investment is worth it, and the information is priceless. Revelations and Translations Volume Four is another “tour de force” from the Church Historians Press.
[1] Confidence Amid Change: The Presidential Diaries of David O McKay, 1951 – 1970. Harvard Heath, Signature Books, 2019, p. 709–710
[2] Pearl of Great Price, page 29
[3] “A translation of some ancient Records that have fallen into our hands, from the Catacombs of Egypt, purporting to be the writings of Abraham, while he was in Egypt, called the Book of Abraham, written by his own hand, upon papyrus.” (Times and Seasons 3 (1842): 704.) – Interestingly enough, the phrase in this version “purporting to be the writings of Abraham” which was removed from the Pearl of Great Price version, makes the T&S version more accurate and a better reflection of current scholarship as outlined in Revelations and Translations Volume 4.
[4] see pp. 235, 236, and 348-351
[5] https://www.lds.org/topics/translation-and-historicity-of-the-book-of-abraham?lang=eng
[6] Pearl of Great Price p. 28
[7] Pearl of Great Price pp. 36-37
[8] Available in the book The Foundational Texts of Mormonism from Oxford University Press. http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/oso/9780190274375.001.0001/oso-9780190274375-chapter-4
[9] http://jur.byu.edu/?p=21296