Book of Abraham Translation Is Fraudulent

The Short Answer

The surviving Joseph Smith Papyri contain Egyptian funerary texts, not the English Book of Abraham. Latter-day Saints should say that plainly.

What does not follow is the claim that we recovered Joseph’s complete papyrus collection and proved that no Abraham text could have been present. The surviving fragments are only part of the collection. Nineteenth-century witnesses described a long roll after the known fragments had already been mounted, and the Church’s historical essay says most of the papyri are believed to have been destroyed after the collection was divided and sold.

The real debate is about the relationship between the lost and surviving papyri, the Book of Abraham manuscripts, and Joseph’s revelatory use of the word “translation.”

Say This in Thirty Seconds

“The fragments recovered in 1967 are real Egyptian funerary texts, and they do not translate into the Book of Abraham. But they are not the whole collection Joseph owned. The Joseph Smith Papers calls them only a portion of the original collection, and eyewitnesses described a long roll that is no longer extant. Scholars debate whether the Book of Abraham came from missing papyrus, was revealed through the papyri as a catalyst, or involved some combination. The recovered fragments create a serious question. They do not give us the missing source text or settle the translation process.”

What We Know

Joseph Smith acquired multiple papyrus rolls and smaller pieces in 1835.
The surviving fragments include portions of a Book of Breathings and Books of the Dead.
The Egyptian around the surviving Facsimile 1 fragment does not translate as the Book of Abraham.
Joseph’s family sold the collection in 1856. It was divided among buyers.
Historians believe most of the collection was destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire.
Eleven fragments are known today. They represent only a portion of the collection.
No eyewitness left a step-by-step account of the Book of Abraham translation.

What We Do Not Know

Which exact papyrus Joseph treated as the source of the Book of Abraham.
How much of each scroll is missing.
What the missing material contained.
Whether the Book of Abraham manuscripts with Egyptian characters preserve the original dictation process or a later effort to reverse-engineer the revealed text.
Whether Joseph’s “translation” was a conventional character-by-character rendering, a revelation prompted by an ancient artifact, or something in between.

Three Live Models

Model	Why someone accepts it	What it still has to explain
Extant-fragment model	Characters from the Book of Breathings appear beside some Book of Abraham manuscript text	The characters do not produce the English text by normal Egyptology
Missing-papyrus model	Witnesses described a long roll, and much of the collection is gone	The missing material cannot be examined, and proposed scroll lengths are disputed
Revelatory or catalyst model	Joseph used “translation” for revealed expansions that were not ordinary language work	Joseph and early Saints believed an ancient Abraham record was physically present

The Church has not made one of these mechanisms a test of faith.

The Forty-Five-Foot Claim

Do not lead with a precise number as though it were settled. Estimates of the original scroll length depend on assumptions about winding patterns, sheet joins, and eyewitness language. The safe and well-supported point is this:

A substantial part of the collection is missing, but its exact length and contents remain debated.

That is enough to defeat the claim that the 1967 fragments are everything Joseph possessed.

What About the Egyptian Alphabet Papers?

The Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar documents do not match modern Egyptology. The Joseph Smith Papers says so directly.

They also do not tell us, by themselves, which direction the work moved:

Joseph translated Egyptian characters into long English passages, or
Joseph and his associates placed characters beside an already revealed English text while trying to construct an Egyptian system.

The manuscripts show genuine nineteenth-century experimentation with Egyptian. They are relevant evidence, not a complete video recording of the translation.

Turn the Question

Are you claiming the surviving fragments are the whole collection? What source establishes that?
Which manuscript is the original dictated Book of Abraham text, and how do you know?
Does “the funerary text does not match” disprove the missing-papyrus model, the catalyst model, or only a direct translation from that fragment?
If Joseph’s Bible revision included revealed text not found in an available manuscript, why assume he always used “translation” in the modern academic sense?
What would count as evidence from the Book of Abraham’s ancient setting, not only evidence about the surviving papyri?

Do Not Say

“The recovered papyri contain the Book of Abraham.” They do not.
“We know the Book of Abraham was on the missing roll.” We do not.
“Forty-five feet of the Abraham scroll definitely burned.” The length and contents are disputed.
“The Kirtland Egyptian Papers have nothing to do with Joseph.” His handwriting appears in part of the project.
“The facsimiles match Egyptology perfectly.” Several of Joseph’s labels differ from standard Egyptological readings.

Best Starting Sources

The Claim at Its Strongest

Joseph Smith said that papyri purchased in 1835 contained writings of Abraham. The fragments returned to the Church in 1967 are ordinary Egyptian funerary texts from many centuries after Abraham. The Egyptian Alphabet documents associate characters from those papyri with long English explanations, yet those explanations do not match modern translations. Joseph’s labels for the facsimiles also differ from the way Egyptologists ordinarily identify the figures.

If Joseph presented an ordinary translation and the source now translates differently, critics argue, this is a direct test that he failed.

That is the right objection to answer. A defense that pretends the surviving Egyptian reads “Abraham” will collapse immediately.

Begin With the Egyptology

Latter-day Saint and non-Latter-day Saint Egyptologists agree on several basic points:

The surviving Hor papyrus is part of a Book of Breathings.
Other fragments contain portions of Books of the Dead.
The extant text dates to the Greco-Roman period, not Abraham’s lifetime.
The characters next to the surviving Facsimile 1 fragment do not translate into the English Book of Abraham.
The Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar project does not conform to modern understanding of Egyptian.
Several of Joseph Smith’s facsimile explanations are not standard Egyptological labels.

These are facts, not concessions forced by critics. They appear in the Church’s Gospel Topics Essay, the Joseph Smith Papers, and Latter-day Saint scholarship.

The dispute begins with what those facts prove.

We Do Not Have the Whole Collection

Joseph Smith and others purchased four mummies, at least two rolls, and additional papyrus pieces in 1835. Joseph’s family sold the artifacts in 1856. The papyri were divided among buyers. The Church’s historical essay reports that historians believe most were later destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire. A group of fragments reached the Metropolitan Museum of Art and was returned to the Church in 1967. Another fragment was found in the Church’s holdings.

The Joseph Smith Papers states that the surviving pieces represent only a portion of the original collection.

This matters because a popular argument often moves through three sentences:

Some Joseph Smith papyri survived.
The surviving papyri are funerary texts.
Therefore all of Joseph’s papyri were funerary texts with no possible Abraham material.

The third sentence does not follow from the first two. The collection is incomplete.

The Long-Roll Evidence

Nineteenth-century visitors, both friendly and hostile, described a long roll associated with the Book of Abraham in the 1840s and 1850s. The fragments known today had been mounted on heavy paper and placed in frames by 1837. The BYU Studies guide argues that those mounted fragments cannot be the rolled material later witnesses described.

That evidence supports a missing-papyrus theory. It does not prove what the roll contained.

Scholars have tried to estimate the original length of the Hor scroll from damage patterns and physical reconstruction. Their estimates differ because the calculation depends on disputed assumptions. A defender should not turn one estimate, such as forty or forty-five feet, into a settled fact.

The careful conclusion is stronger:

Material is missing, witnesses described a long roll, and neither the length nor the contents of the lost material can now be established with certainty.

The missing-papyrus model remains possible. It is not a recovered manuscript sitting in our hands.

Three Models of Translation

The 2022 BYU Studies guide organizes the debate around three broad models. Each accounts for some evidence and leaves other evidence unresolved.

1. Translation From the Surviving Fragments

This model connects the English text to the Hor Book of Breathings fragment because characters from that papyrus appear in the margins of some Book of Abraham manuscripts. Facsimile 1 also came from the same roll.

Its central problem is obvious: the surviving Egyptian text does not conventionally translate into the Book of Abraham.

Some faithful readers combine this model with revelation. They accept that Joseph or his scribes mistakenly associated the revealed English text with the wrong physical fragment. That preserves inspiration but gives up a direct character-by-character translation from the extant papyrus.

2. Translation From Missing Papyrus

This model takes the eyewitness descriptions of a long roll seriously and locates the source text in material no longer extant.

Its strength is that it explains why the surviving fragments do not match. Its weakness is that the proposed source cannot be examined. It also depends on there having been enough missing material and on that material containing an Abraham text, both of which remain disputed.

3. Revelatory or Catalyst Translation

On this model, the papyri prompted a revelation about Abraham without functioning as a line-by-line source for the English text. The Church essay compares this possibility to Joseph’s Book of Moses, received while he studied the Bible, and to other inspired expansions in the Joseph Smith Translation.

This fits Joseph’s broader use of “translation.” He sometimes produced restored or expanded scripture without claiming ordinary linguistic expertise.

Its weakness is also real. Joseph and his contemporaries believed they possessed a physical record connected to Abraham. The published heading called the work a translation of ancient records on papyrus. A catalyst theory should explain that language, not pretend it was never used.

A Combined Model

The categories need not be airtight. A person might believe that an ancient Abraham tradition existed somewhere in the lost collection, that Joseph received its content by revelation rather than conventional grammar, and that his associates later tried to map the revealed English onto visible Egyptian characters.

No surviving source tells us exactly how the process worked. The Church has not canonized one mechanism.

The Kirtland Egyptian Papers

The documents often called the Kirtland Egyptian Papers include Book of Abraham manuscripts, copied Egyptian characters, alphabet documents, and a Grammar and Alphabet volume. They matter because some pages place individual Egyptian signs beside long English passages.

The critical reconstruction says these pages capture the translation process: Joseph saw one character and dictated a paragraph of supposed meaning.

There are several reasons to be cautious:

The surviving Book of Abraham manuscripts appear to be copies, not clearly the first dictation.
It is uncertain who inserted the marginal characters and when.
The relationship between the English text and the alphabet project is disputed.
The work may run from Egyptian characters to English, or from an already revealed English text to a speculative Egyptian system.
Multiple scribes created related but nonidentical documents.

The Joseph Smith Papers describes the alphabet work as an effort by Joseph and his associates to study Egyptian. It also says the result does not comport with modern Egyptology. That is the balanced starting point.

The papers cannot be waved away. They show that Joseph and his circle made mistaken nineteenth-century attempts to understand Egyptian. They also do not prove, without further assumptions, that those pages are a stenographic record of the original Book of Abraham revelation.

”By His Own Hand Upon Papyrus”

The phrase can sound like a claim that the surviving papyrus was Abraham’s original autograph. The extant papyri are far too late for that.

Ancient literature was routinely transmitted through later copies. A text can be “by” an ancient author while the physical manuscript in our possession was copied centuries later. Biblical manuscripts work the same way.

The phrase may identify authorship rather than the age of Joseph’s copy. It may also come from an ancient or modern heading rather than the narrative itself. This does not prove that an Abrahamic copy existed in the lost material. It answers the claim that a late manuscript date, by itself, makes ancient authorship impossible.

The Facsimiles

A serious response must separate two questions:

How would an Egyptologist identify the figures in their funerary setting?
Could those images be reused, adapted, or revealed as part of an Abrahamic interpretation?

The standard Egyptological reading of Facsimile 1 sees a lion-couch scene related to embalming or resurrection. Joseph described Abraham on an altar before an idolatrous priest. Those are not the same description.

Still, the difference is not the end of the inquiry. The BYU Studies guide surveys Egyptian material connecting lion-couch scenes, ritual violence, punishment, resurrection, and priestly figures. For Facsimile 2, the four sons of Horus were associated with the four quarters of the earth, which is close to Joseph’s explanation of figure 6. Other proposed correspondences are more tentative.

The strongest faithful position does not say that every label matches an Egyptology textbook. It asks whether Joseph was giving:

an ordinary Egyptian caption,
a Semitic adaptation of Egyptian imagery,
a revealed reading for an Abrahamic setting,
or some combination.

That question is interpretive. It cannot be settled by announcing that only one cultural use of an image is possible.

Test the English Text Too

The papyri question deserves attention, but the Book of Abraham is more than its nineteenth-century production history. Its own content can also be tested.

Olishem

Abraham 1 places an otherwise unknown “plain of Olishem” near Ur. A twentieth-century inscription mentions a place called Ulisum in the broad northern Mesopotamian or Syrian region. The names and geography are suggestive, not a final identification. They are at least worth more than the claim that the text contains no plausible ancient detail.

Sacrifice for Religious Rebellion

Abraham 1 describes attempted execution tied to rejection of local gods. Research surveyed in the guide documents sanctioned killing and religious punishment in Egyptian and ancient Near Eastern settings. That does not locate Abraham’s altar, but it weakens the claim that the scene is culturally impossible.

Abrahamic Traditions

Later Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions connect Abraham with astronomy, idolatrous relatives, near-sacrifice, and teaching in Egypt. Some of those sources were unavailable or little known in Joseph Smith’s environment; others, such as Josephus, were accessible. Each parallel must be dated and weighed rather than counted as an automatic bullseye.

Literary and Theological Coherence

The Book of Abraham joins covenant, premortal life, creation, divine council, and moral agency into a compact narrative. Literary value does not prove historical translation. It does mean that the work should be judged as a text, not only as a caption attached to one papyrus fragment.

Does This Prove the Book of Abraham?

No historical model proves revelation.

The missing-papyrus model protects a possible physical source but cannot produce it. The catalyst model explains the mismatch with surviving fragments but must account for early physical-record language. Ancient parallels can support plausibility but do not authenticate every verse. Spiritual conviction can justify faith but does not make manuscript questions disappear.

The critical case also has limits. It proves that the extant Egyptian does not conventionally translate into the English Book of Abraham. It does not prove that the extant fragments are the whole collection, that the marginal-character manuscripts record the first dictation, or that revelatory translation must operate like modern academic translation.

That narrower verdict is less dramatic and more accurate.

A Debate-Ready Response

“If your claim is that the surviving papyri are funerary texts, I agree. If your claim is that they are everything Joseph owned, the Joseph Smith Papers says otherwise. If your claim is that the marginal manuscripts prove a character-by-character fraud, you still have to establish that they preserve the original dictation and that the English depended on the alphabet project rather than the project depending on the English. The Book of Abraham remains a hard historical question. The 1967 fragments do not settle every translation model.”

Questions That Change the Conversation

Which exact claim does the funerary translation disprove: every possible source, or only a direct translation from that extant fragment?
What evidence shows that the recovered pieces equal the original collection?
Which document records the original dictation, and how is that date established?
Why must Joseph’s revealed “translation” use the same mechanism as a university Egyptologist?
What weaknesses do you see in the missing-papyrus model and in the catalyst model?
What positive or negative evidence appears inside the English text itself?
Would any evidence count against the fraud conclusion, or has the conclusion been defined so that every outcome confirms it?