Counterfeit Scripture
Mark Hines
In the summer of 1835, Michael Chandler came to Kirtland, Ohio with his
Egyptian mummies and papyri. Joe Smith was interested in the collection,
and his "church" pooled money to buy four mummies and two or more rolls
of papyrus. (History of the Church, Vol. 2, p. 235)
Soon after the sale, Smith said, "I commenced the translation . . . and
much to our joy found that one of the rolls contained the writings of
Abraham, another, the writings of Joseph of Egypt . . ." (Ibid. p. 236)
Joe Smith "translated" the papyri, and the LDS "church" accepted the
"translation" as holy scripture, as authoritative as the Bible. Even in
Smith's day, though, problems with the "translation" started coming up.
In the 1850's, M. Theodule Deveria, who worked for the Louvre Museum in
France, said about Facsimile 3 in the Book of Abraham, "The deceased led
by Ma into the presence of Osiris. His name is Horus, as may be seen in
the prayer which is at the bottom of the picture, and which is addressed
to the divinities of the four cardinal points."
( Jules Remy, Voyage au Pays des Mormons. 2 vols. Paris, 1860)
Professor Gustavus Seyffarth was another early Egyptologist to comment
on the Joe Smith papyri and facsimiles. The following was noted about
Prof. Seyffarth's observations on Facsimile 3, ". . . according to Prof.
Seyffarth, the papyrus roll is not a record, but an invocation to the
Deity Osirus, in which occurs the name of the person, (Horus,) and a
picture of the attendant spirits, introducing the dead to the Judge,
Osirus."
(Catalogue of the St. Louis Museum, 1859, p. 45; cited in Saga, p. 298.)
How could this be? The "Saints" had believed Smith about the
translation. The papyri and "translation" were supposedly about Biblical
patriarch Abraham's story. What are prayers to the pagan gods Osiris and
other attending "deities" in the pagan Book of the Dead doing in Mormon
scripture?
In December 29, 1912, the New York Times headlines about Joe Smith's
Book of Abraham blared, "Sacred Books Claimed to Have Been Given
Divinely to the First Prophet Are Shown to be Taken from Old Egyptian
Originals, Their Translation Being a Work of Imagination."
The headlines were based on the book Joseph Smith, Jr., As a
Translator by F. S. Spalding (Salt Lake City, Utah: The Arrow Press,
1912). In the book no less than eight respected Ph.D. Egyptologists
trashed Smith's translation of Egyptian hieroglyphics and his
explanations of the Facsimiles in the Book of Abraham.
Dr. A. H. Sayce, of Oxford wrote, "It is difficult to deal seriously
with Joseph Smith's impudent fraud."
No less kind were the reviews of Dr. Friedrich Freiheer Von Bissing,
Professor of Egyptology, University of Munich, Dr. James, H. Breasted,
Haskell Oriental Museum, Dr. W. M. Flinders Petrie of London University,
Dr. Arthur C. Mace, Assistant Curator of the Metropolitan Museum's
Egyptian Art Department, Dr. C. A. B. Mercer, Custodian Hibbard
Collection, Egyptian Reproductions, Dr. Edward Meyer, University of
Berlin, and Dr. John Peters of the Univ. of Pennsylvania.
All of the above top Egyptologists had utter contempt for Smith's
"translation." Matters didn't get any better in the 1960's, when the LDS
church accepted Smith's papyri from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Smith's handwriting on the back of the papyri, his drawings of a temple
and a map of the Kirtland, Ohio area established authenticity of the
papyri. There was also the famous Facsimile 1 picture that was
unmistakable. A papyrus fragment (P. JS XI) called the Sensen papyrus
had all of the Egyptian characters Smith copied onto his "alphabet and
grammar." All of them were there, in the same order Smith had copied
them from the Sensen papyrus (Charles Larson, By his own hand upon
papyrus. 1992).
Even Mormon scholar Richley Crapo noted:
"In December of 1967, I was able to examine the original papyri in the
vaults of the BYU library and obtain one of the first released sets of
photographic copies. . . . A more careful examination of these revealed
the startling fact that one of the papyri of the Church collection,
known as the Small Sen-Sen Papyrus, contained the same series of
heiratic symbols, which had been copied, in the same order, into the
Book of Abraham manuscript next to verses of that book! In other words,
there was every indication that the collection of papyri in the hands of
the Church contained the source which led to a production of the Book of
Abraham."
(Ibid.)
Dr. Klaus Baer, (Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought. Autumn 1968),
Dr. Richard Parker (Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought. Summer 1968)
and Dr. John A. Wilson (Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought. Autumn
1968) all had completely different translations than Smith's. And one
didn't even need to go beyond the pictures in the Book of Abraham to
find Smith's translation fraudulent. Smith's Facsimiles were all taken
from well known scenes in the Book of Dead. Even Mormon apologist and
BYU professor admitted (see Encyclopedia of Mormonism) that Facsimile 1
was a scene taken from chapter 151 of the Egyptian Book of the Dead and
that Facsimile 3 was from chapter 125, the Negative Confession chapter.
How could prayers to pagan gods be scripture from God? Careful Bible
readers know that much of the Bible is about God's anger with and
punishment of Hebrews and others who fooled with gods.
The Book of the Dead is a collection of religious and magical texts
known to the ancient Egyptians as The Chapter of Coming-forth by Day.
Its purpose was to secure for the corpse a acceptable afterlife. The
Book of the Dead is a collection of magic spells and formulas mostly on
papyri. Egyptian cults of the dead began using it about 1600 BC. The
text was intended to be recited by corpses as they journeyed in the
underworld. It helped the corpse to overcome stumbling blocks set up by
gods. It had passwords and spells to be learned. For example, there was
one amulet to keep a corpse from eating its own potty. Other spells
granted protection from the gods. This religion was very superstitious,
and it had nothing to do with Abraham and his God.
When conscientious Mormons who are concerned about God's anger find out
the facts of their "church," they, of course, leave before ending up in
hell with Joe Smith.
__________________________
Mark Hines
www.ortk.org/boa.htm
www.ortk.org/e.htm