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To Truth Seekers,
The Book of Abraham is the single best source of answers for the age-old questions: where did we come from and why are we here? The CES Letter’s section on the Book of Abraham offers an entirely negative assessment of the book and Joseph Smith’s professed claims to being an inspired translator. The purpose of this letter is to show you how the CES Letter's treatment of the Book of Abraham is dishonest. It omits evidence that does not help its case and it makes several factual errors. Permit me, if you will, a few moments to show you how.
Runnells made his case against the Book of Abraham this way:
. . . Joseph Smith got everything wrong about the papyri, the facsimiles, the names, the gods, the scene context, the fact that the papyri and facsimiles were first century C.E. funerary text, who was male, who was female, etc. It’s gibberish. There is not one single non-LDS Egyptologist who supports Joseph’s Book of Abraham, its claims, or Joseph’s translations. Even LDS Egyptologists acknowledge there are serious problems with the Book of Abraham and Joseph’s claims.
That is a rhetorically powerful but inaccurate statement. It evokes emotion but distorts truth. What follows is accurate.
The Joseph Smith Papyri
Most of the Egyptian documents Joseph Smith obtained in June 1835 are no longer extant. Only the several remaining papyrus fragments have been extensively studied. Translations of the fragments have been made by both Latter-day Saint and non-Latter-day Saint Egyptologists. They all agree about what the fragments are: portions of what are commonly called Egyptian “funerary” texts—specifically texts known as the Book of Breathings and the Book of the Dead.(1) By claiming “Joseph Smith got everything wrong about the papyri,” Runnells assumes that the fragments that have been studied are the source for the Book of Abraham. That assumption is unsound and unproved. It is like claiming that a few pieces of a large puzzle are the same as the whole puzzle. It is understandable that Jeremy Runnells would make that mistake when he compiled the CES Letter, but scholars do not do that. Scholars of the Book of Abraham are still questing for any pieces of evidence that will help them see more of the puzzle. For example, a few different sources say that Joseph Smith “translated” the Book of Abraham,(2) but there are different theories to account for the relationship shared between the English text of the Book of Abraham and the Egyptian papyri.(3) It would be one thing for Runnells to fairly evaluate the different interpretations of the known facts and then articulate his own beliefs, but that isn’t what the CES Letter does. Rather, it takes a dogmatic approach. It uses emotional, superlative words like "everything." If a person only reads the CES Letter for their knowledge of the debates about the Book of Abraham, they won't be told the verifiable facts that are the same no matter what interpretation a person chooses. And they will only be told one interpretation. The CES Letter makes it seem as if all informed people know the Book of Abraham is a fake, and that the only reason for believing it is a believer's bias. That is simply not true. All scholars of the Book of Abraham–believers and non-believers–know the same verifiable facts and come to different conclusions about what the facts mean.
The CES Letter isn't aware of its own bias. It gives the impression that you are a fool to believe the Book of Abraham and the matter is closed. There is no more to learn. I hope you will know that the matter is not closed. There is more to learn. Well-educated and informed Latter-day Saint Egyptologists accept faithful interpretations of the facts.
Truth seekers need to know all the facts for themselves, consider all possible interpretations, and choose the one that accounts best for all the facts. As you work through that process, don't forget that The Book of Abraham profoundly answers the age-old questions: where did we come from and why are we here?
The Facsimiles of the Book of Abraham
In the CES Letter, Jeremy claims that Joseph got “everything wrong” with the facsimiles of the Book of Abraham. That is demonstrably not true. There is no consensus among scholars about the facsimiles—either from an Egyptological point of view or understanding what Joseph Smith intended by including them in the Book of Abraham.(4) My colleagues and I catalogued several examples of Joseph Smith being spot on in his interpretations of the facsimiles as well as evidence of authentic ancient concepts in his explanations.(5) Joseph Smith’s interpretation of the hypocephalus (Facsimile 2) alone provides a rich treasure trove of fascinating and authentic convergences with ancient cosmology.(6)
There are still unanswered questions about the facsimiles. Those of us who study them professionally do not claim that all of Joseph Smith’s interpretations match current Egyptological knowledge. But the CES Letter's claim that Joseph Smith got everything about the facsimiles wrong is not true. It is not clear whether Jeremy Runnells is ignorant of all the facts or is intentionally misleading about them. In either case the CES Letter has not been updated to reflect the current state of knowledge.
The Names in the Book of Abraham
Runnells claims that the names in the Book of Abraham are “gibberish.” By this I assume he means the non-divine names unique to the text, since he also claims that Joseph Smith made up the “gods” in the Book of Abraham (more on this below). The onomasticon (a list or collection of names) of unique, non-divine names or words in the Book of Abraham (excluding the facsimiles) includes the following (in alphabetic order): Egyptus, Gnolaum, Kokaubeam, Kokob, Kolob, Olea, Olishem, Onitah, Rahleenos, and Shinehah. Hebrew scholars recognize in this list the obvious Hebrew etymologies for Kokaubeam and Kokob, the plural and singular forms, respectively, for the word “star(s)”; so likewise, Gnolaum is the Hebrew word for “eternal.”(7) Egyptus clearly derives from the Greek as the name for the city of Memphis and, incidentally, the name was originally Zeptah in the Kirtland-era Book of Abraham manuscripts, which is likely an authentically attested Egyptian name.(8) Olishem is most likely the name Ulisim attested in inscriptions from Abraham’s day.(9) Kolob is plausibly derived from the Afro-Asiatic root *qrb/qlb.(11) Shinehah is plausibly the Egyptian word for the sun’s ecliptic. This leaves only Olea, Onitah, and Rahleenos as words that, as of now, have no obvious etymologies. That is not too bad for a bunch of words that are, according to Jeremy, “gibberish.”
The Gods of the Book of Abraham
The CES Letter also claims that the names of gods in the Book of Abraham are “gibberish” and that Joseph Smith got them all wrong. This claim is not true. In 2020, John Gee (Yale PhD in Egyptology) demonstrated that three of the four names of the idolatrous gods in the Book of Abraham are attested in antiquity and that the fourth has plausible but not yet definitive attestation.(12) The name of the god Elkenah, which features prominently in the opening chapter of the Book of Abraham, is almost certainly an abundantly attested ancient god.(13) The CES Letter leaves out these facts and others.
Latter-day Saint Egyptologists and the Book of Abraham
The CES Letter makes the claim that “even LDS Egyptologists acknowledge there are serious problems with the Book of Abraham and Joseph’s claims.” As evidence for this, he cites a single study by Stephen E. Thompson published in the 1990s.(14) Thompson is a former Latter-day Saint and an Egyptologist who has a skeptical view of the Book of Abraham’s historicity. He has raised legitimate points of question about the text.(15) That is a list of one former LDS Egyptologist, not the "LDS Egyptologists" Jeremy claimed. There is a longer list of faithful, believing Latter-day Saints with varying degrees of academic training in Egyptology who do accept the inspiration and historicity of the Book of Abraham, including but not limited to: Hugh Nibley, John Gee, Michael D. Rhodes, John S. Thompson, Kerry Muhlestein, Krystal Pierce, Quinten Barney, David Calabro, Val Sederholm, and yours truly. The CES Letter does not cite our work, the facts we have discovered, or our expert interpretations.
The existence of believing scholars does not prove the Book of Abraham is true. It proves that there are several people who know a lot more than Jeremy Runnells knows about the Egyptian papyri and facsimiles who do not share his interpretation. The fact that the late prominent Egyptologist Robert Ritner concludes that The Book of Abraham is bogus shows that the facts known by both believing and unbelieving scholars are not the determining factor between belief, or lack thereof, in the Book of Abraham.
Give careful consideration to the fact that the CES Letter cherry-picks examples. Jeremy isolated one skeptical scholar(16) from the 1990s to create the impression that there is some broad consensus among “even LDS Egyptologists” that the authenticity of the Book of Abraham is in jeopardy. It is a fact that Latter-day Saint Egyptologists and other scholars who have studied the Book of Abraham most accept it as an authentic text with ancient ties.
The CES Letter is also dishonest in quoting the Gospel Topics essay on the Book of Abraham published by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.(17) Twice in his section of the CES Letter on the Book of Abraham Runnells quotes the essay thus:
None of the characters on the papyrus fragments mentioned Abraham’s name or any of the events recorded in the book of Abraham. Mormon and non-Mormon Egyptologists agree that the characters on the fragments do not match the translation given in the book of Abraham, though there is not unanimity, even among non-Mormon scholars, about the proper interpretation of the vignettes on these fragments. Scholars have identified the papyrus fragments as parts of standard funerary texts that were deposited with mummified bodies. These fragments date to between the third century B.C.E. and the first century C.E., long after Abraham lived.
This passage tries to convince readers that the Church is sheepishly conceding to Book of Abraham critics. It is not. Immediately following the paragraph Jeremy cited, the Gospel Topics essay says this (quoted verbatim for the full context):
Of course, the fragments do not have to be as old as Abraham for the book of Abraham and its illustrations to be authentic. Ancient records are often transmitted as copies or as copies of copies. The record of Abraham could have been edited or redacted by later writers much as the Book of Mormon prophet-historians Mormon and Moroni revised the writings of earlier peoples. Moreover, documents initially composed for one context can be repackaged for another context or purpose. Illustrations once connected with Abraham could have either drifted or been dislodged from their original context and reinterpreted hundreds of years later in terms of burial practices in a later period of Egyptian history. The opposite could also be true: illustrations with no clear connection to Abraham anciently could, by revelation, shed light on the life and teachings of this prophetic figure.
Some have assumed that the hieroglyphs adjacent to and surrounding facsimile 1 must be a source for the text of the book of Abraham. But this claim rests on the assumption that a vignette and its adjacent text must be associated in meaning. In fact, it was not uncommon for ancient Egyptian vignettes to be placed some distance from their associated commentary.
Neither the Lord nor Joseph Smith explained the process of translation of the book of Abraham, but some insight can be gained from the Lord’s instructions to Joseph regarding translation. In April 1829, Joseph received a revelation for Oliver Cowdery that taught that both intellectual work and revelation were essential to translating sacred records. It was necessary to “study it out in your mind” and then seek spiritual confirmation. Records indicate that Joseph and others studied the papyri and that close observers also believed that the translation came by revelation. As John Whitmer observed, “Joseph the Seer saw these Record[s] and by the revelation of Jesus Christ could translate these records.”
It is likely futile to assess Joseph’s ability to translate papyri when we now have only a fraction of the papyri he had in his possession. Eyewitnesses spoke of “a long roll” or multiple “rolls” of papyrus. Since only fragments survive, it is likely that much of the papyri accessible to Joseph when he translated the book of Abraham is not among these fragments. The loss of a significant portion of the papyri means the relationship of the papyri to the published text cannot be settled conclusively by reference to the papyri.
Alternatively, Joseph’s study of the papyri may have led to a revelation about key events and teachings in the life of Abraham, much as he had earlier received a revelation about the life of Moses while studying the Bible. This view assumes a broader definition of the words translator and translation. According to this view, Joseph’s translation was not a literal rendering of the papyri as a conventional translation would be. Rather, the physical artifacts provided an occasion for meditation, reflection, and revelation. They catalyzed a process whereby God gave to Joseph Smith a revelation about the life of Abraham, even if that revelation did not directly correlate to the characters on the papyri.
The fact that Jeremy reduced the Church’s overall thoughtful, nuanced essay on the Book of Abraham into a damning soundbite is characteristic of how the entire CES Letter works. Truth seekers need balanced, accurate information on controversial subjects like The Book of Abraham.(18)
The CES Letter is not good at providing balanced, accurate information. It seems disingenuous to me that the CES Letter does what it claims The Church does. It lacks transparency. It is missing a lot of truths that are favorable to the authenticity of the Book of Abraham.
Cordially yours,
Stephen O. Smoot
Cordially yours,
Stephen O. Smoot
See “What Egyptian Papyri Did Joseph Smith Possess?” BYU Studies Quarterly.
See “How Did Joseph Smith Translate the Book of Abraham?” BYU Studies Quarterly.
See “The Relationship between the Book of Abraham and the Joseph Smith Papyri.” BYU Studies Quarterly.
See “Approaching the Facsimiles” and “A Semitic View of the Facsimiles.” BYU Studies Quarterly.
Consult the following: “The Idolatrous Priest (Facsimile 1, Figure 3),” “One Day to a Cubit (Facsimile 2, Figure 1),” “The Hathor Cow (Facsimile 2, Figure 5),” “The Four Sons of Horus (Facsimile 2, Figure 6),” “God Sitting upon His Throne (Facsimile 2, Figure 7),” “Abraham and Osiris (Facsimile 3, Figure 1),” “Isis the Pharaoh (Facsimile 3, Figure 2),” and “Shulem, One of the King’s Principal Waiters (Facsimile 3, Figure 5).” BYU Studies Quarterly.
Consult Hugh Nibley and Michael D. Rhodes, One Eternal Round. The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley 19 (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book; Provo, Utah: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, 2010).
On the presence of Hebrew words and concepts in the Book of Abraham, see 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, edited by Lincoln H. Blumell, Matthew J. Grey, and Andrew H. Hedges (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2015), 249–302; “Approaching Egyptian Papyri through Biblical Language: Joseph Smith’s Use of Hebrew in His Translation of the Book of Abraham,” in Producing Ancient Scripture: Joseph Smith’s Translation Projects in the Development of Mormon Christianity, edited by Michael Hubbard MacKay, Mark Ashurst-McGee, and Brian M. Hauglid (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2020), 390–451.
See “Zeptah and Egyptes.” BYU Studies Quarterly.
See “The Plain of Olishem,” BYU Studies Quarterly.
See “Kolob, the Governing One,” BYU Studies Quarterly.
See “Shinehah, the Sun,” BYU Studies Quarterly.
See “Four Idolatrous Gods in the Book of Abraham.” Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship.
See “The Idolatrous God Elkenah.” BYU Studies Quarterly.
Runnells cites “Egyptology and the Book of Abraham.” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought.
I should point out that an effective response to Thompson was made in 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, edited by Paul Y. Hoskisson (Provo, Utah: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 2001), 63–98.
If he wanted a second example, Runnells could have included Ed Ashment.
See “Translation and Historicity of the Book of Abraham.” The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
For a more honest approach, see “How Did Joseph Smith Translate the Book of Abraham?” BYU Studies Quarterly.
Biography:
Stephen O. Smoot is a doctoral candidate in Semitic and Egyptian Languages and Literature at the Catholic University of America. He previously earned a master’s degree from the University of Toronto in Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations, with a concentration in Egyptology, and bachelor’s degrees from Brigham Young University in Ancient Near Eastern Studies, with a concentration in Hebrew Bible, and German Studies. He is currently an adjunct instructor of religious education at Brigham Young University and a research associate with the B. H. Roberts Foundation.
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