The Book of Abraham — What LDS Actually Believe
Honest treatment of the papyri question — without defensiveness
The Book of Abraham is one of the most genuinely interesting — and most frequently misrepresented — issues in LDS apologetics. Critics treat it as an open-and-shut case: Joseph Smith claimed to translate some Egyptian papyri, Egyptologists examined those papyri and found no text resembling Abraham, therefore Joseph Smith was a fraud. Case closed.
The case is not closed. The evidence is more complicated than either critics or defensive members typically acknowledge. An honest treatment requires setting out what is known, what is contested, what the alternative explanations are, and why serious LDS scholars continue to defend the Book of Abraham's authenticity despite the challenges.
The content of the Book of Abraham — regardless of how one resolves the papyri question — is among the most remarkable doctrinal texts in the entire LDS canon. That content deserves to be evaluated on its own terms.
What the Book of Abraham Is
The Book of Abraham is part of the Pearl of Great Price, one of the four LDS standard works. It purports to be a translation of writings of the patriarch Abraham, described as having been "written by his own hand, upon papyrus." It includes a narrative of Abraham's early life in Ur, his near-sacrifice on an altar at the hands of an idolatrous priest, his call by God, and his journey to Egypt.
More significantly for LDS theology, it includes Abraham 3 — a vision in which God shows Abraham the organization of the cosmos, the intelligences organized before the world was, the pre-mortal council, the selection of the noble and great ones, and the plan of salvation as presented in the heavenly council. This chapter is among the most theologically important in all of LDS scripture.
The text also includes three facsimiles — reproductions of images from the papyri with Joseph Smith's explanations of their content. It is the facsimiles, and the surviving papyri associated with them, that are at the center of the controversy.
What Joseph Claimed
In 1835, Joseph Smith acquired several Egyptian mummies and associated papyri from a traveling exhibitor named Michael Chandler. He examined the papyri and declared that he could read them. He began a "translation" that eventually produced the Book of Abraham, published in installments in 1842 in the Times and Seasons.
Joseph also produced an Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar — a document that appears to show him assigning meanings to Egyptian characters. This document has been used by critics to demonstrate that his "translation" method does not correspond to actual Egyptology. That is a fair point and not disputed.
What is disputed is whether the Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar represents Joseph's actual translation process, or whether it was a subsequent attempt by him and his scribes to systematize something that was produced through revelation rather than through linguistic analysis. This distinction matters enormously for how you evaluate the evidence.
What the Papyri Are
The original papyri were believed destroyed in the Chicago Fire of 1871. In 1966, fragments were rediscovered in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and returned to the Church. Egyptologists examined them and concluded that the surviving fragments contain portions of the Egyptian Book of Breathings — a common funerary text — and that the content does not match the Book of Abraham.
This is the core of the critical argument: the fragments that survive are common funerary documents, not an Abrahamic text. And Joseph Smith's explanation of the facsimiles does not match what Egyptologists say those images represent.
The critical case is real. It should be acknowledged. Defenders of the Book of Abraham who pretend this problem does not exist are not serving their audience honestly.
What Critics Say
Critics argue: Joseph Smith claimed the papyri contained the writings of Abraham. Egyptologists say they don't. Therefore Joseph Smith was wrong. Therefore the Book of Abraham is not what it claims to be. Therefore Joseph Smith was not a prophet.
This argument is straightforward and, on its own terms, powerful. It would be decisive if we knew: (1) that all the papyri survived; (2) that the surviving fragments are the specific ones from which the Book of Abraham was produced; and (3) that Joseph Smith's claim was that he performed a standard philological translation of specific characters.
None of these three things is certain. Each is contested, with evidence on both sides.
The Catalyst Theory
The Church's Gospel Topics Essay on the Book of Abraham acknowledges the papyri problem directly and presents what is called the "catalyst theory" — the possibility that the papyri served as a catalyst for revelation rather than as the source of a linguistically derived translation. In other words, Joseph may have received the Book of Abraham by revelation inspired by the papyri, rather than by reading specific characters and translating them word by word.
This explanation is consistent with how Joseph described his translation of the Book of Mormon — which was also described as revelatory rather than philological. Witnesses described Joseph looking at a seer stone (not always at the plates) and receiving the text by inspiration. If the same process applied to the Book of Abraham, the content of the text is independent of the Egyptian characters on the papyri.
D&C 9:8
“But, behold, I say unto you, that you must study it out in your mind; then you must ask me if it be right, and if it is right I will cause that your bosom shall burn within you; therefore, you shall feel that it is right.”
LDS "translation" in the revelatory sense is not the same as linguistic decipherment. D&C 9 describes the revelatory translation process as involving the Spirit, not simply linguistic competency. If that is how Joseph Smith worked, then whether the papyri contain the Book of Abraham in an Egyptological sense is a separate question from whether the text he received by revelation is authentic.
What the Scholarship Actually Shows
Several significant scholarly findings complicate the simple critical narrative. First, the missing papyri problem: the surviving fragments represent a small portion of the original collection. The scroll from which the Book of Abraham was produced may not have survived. We cannot compare the full original papyri to the Book of Abraham because we do not have them.
Second, the Facsimile 2 scholarship: the hypocephalus (Facsimile 2) has been studied by multiple Egyptologists, some of whom acknowledge that Joseph Smith's explanations, while not matching standard Egyptological readings, correspond to elements found in Egyptian religious texts related to the Osirian resurrection — texts that were not widely accessible in 1835. The correspondence may not be accidental.
Third, the Abraham-in-Egypt tradition: extra-biblical Jewish and early Christian texts — including the works of Pseudo-Philo, Josephus, and the Cave of Treasures — contain traditions about Abraham's encounter with Egyptian priests and his near-sacrifice that closely parallel elements of the Book of Abraham. These traditions were not available in English in 1835. Their parallel content in the Book of Abraham is a genuine evidential puzzle for the fabrication hypothesis.
Key Scriptures in Abraham
- Abraham 1:1–4 — Abraham's desire for righteousness and the rights of the fathers; his near-sacrifice
- Abraham 3:1–5 — Kolob, the governing star; the structure of the cosmos revealed
- Abraham 3:22–28 — The pre-mortal council; the noble and great ones; Christ volunteers
The Content — Regardless of Mechanism — Is Remarkable
Abraham 3 is one of the most theologically dense chapters in LDS scripture. It teaches: the organization of intelligences before the earth was created; a hierarchy of heavenly beings with God presiding; a council in which the plan of salvation was presented; Christ volunteering for the atonement; Lucifer's rejection and rebellion; and the purpose of mortality as a proving of pre-mortal souls.
These teachings are coherent with the Dead Sea Scrolls, with Kabbalistic theology, with ancient Jewish apocalyptic literature, and with early Christian texts that were not available to Joseph Smith. They are not what an 1835 American would have invented — they are what an ancient patriarch familiar with the divine council would have described.
The papyri question is real. The apologetic responses to it are serious and well-developed. But even if you set the papyri question aside entirely, you are left with the content of Abraham 3 — content that describes the pre-mortal council in detail that has since been confirmed by multiple ancient sources Joseph Smith could not have accessed. That content is either ancient or inspired. A 19-year-old farm boy's invention it is not.
Why LDS Scholars Defend It
LDS scholars who work on the Book of Abraham — including John Gee, Kerry Muhlestein, and others at LDS universities and research institutes — have spent careers engaging with this question. They are not naive about the challenges. They have read the Egyptological literature. They have examined the facsimiles. They do not dismiss the problem.
They defend the Book of Abraham because the evidence, in their assessment, is more complicated than the critical presentation acknowledges — because the missing papyri argument is real, because the extra-biblical parallels are significant, because the facsimile scholarship is contested, and because the content of the text itself is far more impressive than anything a nineteenth-century fabricator would be expected to produce.
The honest reader should do the same thing these scholars have done: engage the evidence seriously, acknowledge what is genuinely problematic, and evaluate the totality of the case. The totality is more favorable to Joseph Smith's claim than critics admit — and more complicated than defenders sometimes acknowledge. That complexity is the honest starting point for anyone who wants to understand what LDS actually believe about the Book of Abraham and why.