1831–present

The Book of Abraham and the Joseph Smith Papyri

A scripture, a scroll, and the one translation that could be checked

12 people, ordered by how much of this topic turns on them. Each note describes the person's part in this topic, not a biography — the same person carries a different note on another topic.

JJ

Joseph Smith Jr.

1805–1844

Founding prophet, translator

Smith examined Chandler's papyri in July 1835, announced that one roll contained the writings of Abraham and another the writings of Joseph of Egypt, and urged the purchase. His history records that he spent the rest of July 'translating an alphabet to the Book of Abraham, and arrangeing a grammar of the Egyptian language as practiced by the ancients.' He published the text and his own explanations of the three facsimiles in 1842 and supervised the engraver, Reuben Hedlock, as the plates were cut.

Wikipedia Image: Public domain

MC

Michael H. Chandler

Travelling antiquities exhibitor

Chandler arrived in Kirtland on 3 July 1835 with four mummies, two or more papyrus rolls and loose fragments, claiming to have inherited them from his uncle Antonio Lebolo. He had already exhibited and sold portions of the collection in eastern cities. On 6 July he gave Smith a written certificate that Smith's readings of the characters corresponded with what learned men had told him — a testimonial from a man with strong reason to close a sale and, as even faithful writers concede, no ability to check the claim.

WP

William W. Phelps

1792–1872

Scribe, Egyptian-language project

Phelps wrote to his wife Sally in July 1835 that Smith 'knew what they were' and intended to 'translate and print them in a book,' and in September that 'nothing has been doing in the translation of the Egyptian Record for a long time.' He inscribed most of the bound Grammar and Alphabet volume, one of the three Egyptian Alphabet documents, and the prefatory material of Book of Abraham Manuscript–C. How much of the Egyptian-language project was his rather than Smith's is itself a live argument.

Wikipedia Image: Public domain

WP

Warren Parrish

Scribe, later dissenter

Hired as Smith's scribe on 29 October 1835, Parrish inscribed Book of Abraham Manuscript–B and, with Phelps, the fuller Manuscript–C. After leaving the church he wrote in 1838 that he had 'set by his side and penned down the Egyptian hieroglyphicks as he claimed to receive it by direct inspiration from heaven' — a hostile witness whose testimony critics read as evidence that characters were being worked from directly.

Wikipedia

FW

Frederick G. Williams

1787–1842

Counselor in the First Presidency, scribe

Williams inscribed Book of Abraham Manuscript–A, closely paralleling Parrish's Manuscript–B; the Joseph Smith Papers editors judge that large portions of the two were created and revised simultaneously, probably from dictation. Two insertions in Williams's hand point the reader to the sacrifice vignette, tying the English text to the illustration published as Facsimile 1. The mummies were kept at his house at least into November 1835.

Wikipedia Image: Public domain

OC

Oliver Cowdery

1806–1850

Scribe; first public defender

Cowdery copied characters from the rolls, inscribed Egyptian Alphabet–B, and worked with Smith and Phelps on the alphabet on 1 October 1835 when, the journal says, 'the system of astronomy was unfolded.' His 22 December 1835 letter to William Frye, printed in the Messenger and Advocate as 'Egyptian Mummies—Ancient Records,' is the fullest contemporary public account and denies the rumor that the church claimed to own Abraham's body.

Wikipedia Image: Public domain

FS

Franklin S. Spalding

1865–1914

Episcopal bishop of Utah

In 1912 Spalding mailed the three facsimiles to eight Egyptologists and Assyriologists — Sayce, Petrie, Breasted, Mace, Peters, Mercer, Meyer and von Bissing — and published their replies as 'Joseph Smith, Jr., As a Translator.' He reported that 'in no case did one man know the opinion of another' and that agreement among them was practically complete. He is not to be confused with Solomon Spalding of the Book of Mormon authorship theory.

Wikipedia Image: Public domain

AA

Aziz S. Atiya

1898–1988

Coptic historian, University of Utah

Atiya, not a Latter-day Saint, was searching Coptic files at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1966 when he recognized a damaged vignette as the original of Facsimile 1, glued to a backing sheet with the missing figures drawn in. Ten other fragments and an 1856 bill of sale signed by Emma Bidamon, Lewis Bidamon and Joseph Smith III were with it. He arranged the contact that led to the Museum's 1967 transfer of the fragments to the Church.

Wikipedia Image: CC BY-SA 4.0 — University of Michigan News and Information Services

KB

Klaus Baer

1930–1987

Egyptologist, University of Chicago

Baer, who had tutored Hugh Nibley in reading Egyptian, published the first extensive translation of the recovered text in Dialogue in autumn 1968 under the title 'The Breathing Permit of Hôr: A Translation of the Apparent Source of the Book of Abraham.' He travelled to Provo and examined the papyri personally, called his own study preliminary, and stated flatly that Joseph Smith thought this papyrus contained the Book of Abraham.

Wikipedia

RR

Robert K. Ritner

1953–2021

Egyptologist, University of Chicago

Baer's successor at the Oriental Institute, Ritner revisited the Hor document in Dialogue in 2000 and later published a full translation of the whole Joseph Smith collection. He concluded that changes from Baer's reading 'are few and do not challenge his basic understanding of the text,' defended the 1912 Egyptologists against Nibley's attacks on them, and wrote a point-by-point response to the Church's 2014 Gospel Topics essay.

Wikipedia

HN

Hugh Nibley

1910–2005

BYU scholar; church's designated respondent

Nibley was assigned to lead the church's response after 1967. He argued that the only evidence for what Smith thought he was translating was the side-by-side arrangement of brief characters with long English passages, that this proves nothing, and that the Kirtland Egyptian Papers were a by-product — either 'studying it out' or an attempt to reverse-engineer a revealed text. Critics, including Thomas Stuart Ferguson, complained that he spent his early articles attacking Spalding's 1912 panel rather than the papyri.

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JG

John Gee

b. 1964

BYU Egyptologist, missing-scroll advocate

Gee argues from eyewitness descriptions and scroll geometry that a long roll of Hor once existed, later revising his estimate to roughly 314 centimetres, and that the surviving fragments are not the source. He reviewed the 2018 Joseph Smith Papers volume on the Book of Abraham under the title 'The Joseph Smith Papers Project Stumbles,' opening a public quarrel with the volume's own editors — one of the clearest cases of faithful scholars disagreeing with each other in print.

Wikipedia Image: CC BY 3.0 — BYU's Maxwell Institute