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Dr. Ritner Debunks Mormon Claim
A Mormon on an Internet
discussion board states that current-day understanding of Egyptian hieratic is
accurately represented in uniquely LDS scripture, the Book of Abraham.
Mormonism
holds as scripture four standard works; the King James Bible, Book of Mormon,
Doctrine and Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price. In the Pearl of Great
Price there is a book of 15 pages known as the Book of Abraham (BoA).
The official website of
the LDS Church describes the BoA in this one-paragraph introduction:
THE BOOK
OF ABRAHAM
TRANSLATED FROM THE PAPYRUS, BY JOSEPH SMITH
"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. See History of the
Church, vol. 2, pp. 235, 236, 348—351."
The
ancient records mentioned above are papyri sold to the early LDS church by
Michael Chandler. In July of 1835, Chandler had for sale genuine Egyptian
artifacts including four mummies and papyri scrolls with hieratic markings.
Upon hearing of the scrolls, Smith examined them and stated to his young
church that the scrolls were penned by the Biblical patriarch Abraham.
Smith expressed interest in buying the scrolls but Chandler would sell only the mummies
together with the scrolls for the price of $2,400, a hefty sum in 1835,
estimated at approximately $47,000 by 2007 standards by this inflation calculator.
Smith found two investors and the scrolls became the property of the LDS
church.
Smith states:
"...with W. W. Phelps and Oliver Cowdery
as scribes, I commence the translation of some of the characters or
hieroglyphics, and much to our joy found that one of the rolls contained the
writings of Abraham, another the writings of Joseph of Egypt, etc. - a more
full account of which will appear in its place, as I proceed to examine or
unfold them. Truly we can say, the Lord is beginning
to reveal the abundance of peace and truth." (History of the Church,
Vol. 2, p. 236)
It was
impossible at the time for anyone in the U.S. to accurately translate
hieratic into English. But today, we can. Egyptologists now say that Smith's
Book of Abraham is a common Egyptian funeral text giving a blessing to a dead
priest.
Mormons
insist, however, that the translation Smith provided is accurate, by the
power of the Holy Ghost, and the Book of Abraham remains in their canonized
works.
A Mormon writes:
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"Many of the
prophet's explanations of the hypocephalus illustrated in Facsimile 2 are
supported by our present understanding of ancient Egyptian religion, and are
in fact especially typical of Late Egyptian religious writings. One or two
could conceivably be dismissed as mere chance or lucky guessing, but the
many correct interpretations taken together are impossible to ignore. It is
clear that Joseph Smith knew what he was talking about."
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With the comment in mind that current-day understanding
of Egyptian hieratic is in line with Mormon founder, Joseph Smith's
interpretations, I decided to check with an expert on the issue.
What I found is that the claim is erroneous.
Egyptologist
Dr. Robert K. Ritner has thoroughly examined Joseph Smith’s claim and
presents his thoughts in the video, The Lost Book of Abraham -
produced by the Institute
for Religious Research.* The video can be viewed in its entirety here: http://www.irr.org/mit/book-of-abraham-page.html
Pick up the video at 38:51
Narrator: We wanted to get an
official explanation of how the {LDS} Church today understands the Book of
Abraham. However, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints declined
our request for an interview.
Michael
Purdy of the Church’s public affairs department did refer us to this book by
Mormon scholar John Gee. {Picture in video: A Guide to the Joseph Smith
Papyri}.
Dr. Gee puts forth the position that other than the original of facsimile no.
1, the papyrus fragments given to the Church in 1967 were not the portion of
the Book of Abraham. He claims the scroll Joseph used was originally 10 feet
long and that there was a large section that is now missing which may have
contained the lost book.
Robert K. Ritner Ph.D. presents on camera, "There’s
certainly no reason to believe that this Book of Breathings scroll
should be expanded much beyond the surviving length."
"I’ve now read the entire document from beginning to end and I’ve made
out what one can make out of the poor copy of the final vignette. The most
that is missing from this text is simply two columns worth of Egyptian
hieratic and possibly a small vignette. But other than that there
would be nothing more that would inflate the scroll beyond its current
size."
"It is both unprecedented and unreasonable to assume that an intrusive
text about a completely different matter; a narrative history of Abraham and
his descendants would have been inserted into a document whose beginning,
middle and end is devoted specifically to the resurrection of an Egyptian
priest. It would disrupt the document and it would have nothing to do with
its content; it would be unprecedented; no other document would have such a
thing and the narrative style of the Book of Abraham does not correspond to
Egyptian verbiage. It’s not the kind of thing Egyptians would say; they
wouldn’t say it in that way and it certainly would never appear in a context
such as this. It couldn’t possibly be more out of place."
Narrator: Another Mormon scholar,
Michael D. Rhodes of Brigham Young University, writing in the Encyclopedia
of Mormonism argues that Joseph Smith may have received the Book of
Abraham by direct revelation from God and only used the papyri to illustrate
what he learned from revelation.
Rhodes
writes: "…when studying the Egyptian papyri purchased from Michael Chandler,
Joseph Smith sought revelation from the Lord concerning them and received in
that process the book of Abraham. He might then have searched through the
papyri in his possession to find illustrations similar to those he had
learned by revelation."
Stop
41:16
Start 42:23
Narrator: Michael Rhodes Of Brigham Young University also claims in the Encyclopedia
of Mormonism that Joseph Smith’s explanations of the facsimiles are
accurate.
Ritner
continued: "I want to be absolutely clear on this."
"There simply is no justification for the kind of interpretations that
appear in facsimile no. 1 or facsimile no. 3. They are wrong with regard to
the hieroglyphs, they are wrong with regard to the gender, they are wrong
with regard to the understanding of what the scene actually represents and
where they are used in the body of the text. They are wrong there as
well."
"In short, there is no historical validity for the interpretations in
that book. None whatsoever."
Editor's comment:
"None
whatsoever."
The
LDS claim that the Book of Abraham is based on current-day understanding of
Egyptian language is erroneous.
Russ
Bales
*Excerpts
from IRR's video posted with permission.
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