The Original Length of the Scroll of Hôr

Mormon studies review, 2004

Religious Education Review 10.1, 2017

2010

Latter-day Saint Historical Studies, 2020

Reviewed by Colby Townsend M ost ~eaders familiar with the bo~k of Abraham are aw~re that Jose~h Smith Jr. and a few of his associates purchased Egyptian mummies in 1835 from a man named Michael Chandler, that Smith claimed to discover the book of Abraham on one of the papyri, that during his lifetime he published the book, and that it was later canonized as scripture in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Many readers are also aware that the papyri were believed to be lost, possibly in the Chicago fire, but were then rediscovered in the mid-twentieth century. Fewer readers are aware that the textual world of the Book of Abraham involves not just the rediscovery of Egyptian papyri but also alphabet and grammar books that Smith and his associates created while producing the text of the book of Abraham. For the first time in the book's history, a broad audience of scholars and lay readers can now experience the complete immediate textual world of the book of Abraham, thanks to the ongoing efforts of the scholars at the Joseph Smith Papers Project (JSPP) in the Church History Department of the Church. This volume perfectly continues the strong tradition of academic rigor and aesthetic quality evident in the previous volumes in the Revelation and Translation series. The two volume editors, Robin Jensen and Brian Hauglid, should be commended for the work that they have done in bringing together this wealth of information. The book's introduction briefly lays out a history of the book of Abraham and the nineteenth-century context of its manuscript tradition, followed by a short description of the editorial method of the JSPP and a note about the photographic facsimiles in the volume. This volume includes all of the extant papyri, Egyptian-language documents that Smith and his associates created in an attempt to understand the Egyptian hieroglyphs, and the earliest manuscripts and first printing of the book of Abraham. Each document is accompanied by a historical introduction and a description of the manuscript, including size of paper and the document's current condition. The vast majority of the manuscripts, covering pages 25-335, are the Egyptian

The Interpreter, 2019

Review of The Joseph Smith Papers, Revelations and Translations, Volume 4: Book of Abraham and Related Manuscripts, eds. Robin Scott Jensen and Brian M. Hauglid (Salt Lake City: Church Historian’s Press, 2018), 381 pages. Abstract: The publication of high-resolution documents and carefully prepared transcripts related to the origins of the Book of Abraham in The Joseph Smith Papers, Revelations and Translations, Volume 4: Book of Abraham and Related Manuscripts is a remarkable achievement that can help students of Church history and of the Book of Abraham explore many aspects of that volume of scripture for themselves. The book, especially when coupled with the resources and advanced interface of the Joseph Smith Papers website, will provide lasting value for scholars, students, and anyone wishing to better understand the Book of Abraham and its complex origins. However, there are some gaps in the book that must be understood, including a mix of minor errors, questionable assumptions, and a few major problems that can unnecessarily lead readers to question the ancient roots and the divine inspiration behind the Book of Abraham. A future addendum could help resolve many such issues and would be a welcome addition. However, there may be a fundamental flaw in the commentary that tends to align with the way critics of the Church approach the Book of Abraham as a product of Joseph’s environment rather than a text rooted in revelation and antiquity. Sadly, in spite of hundreds of footnotes with extensive references to the research and perspectives of some scholars, this volume tends to exclude a great deal of relevant research provided by some noteworthy scholars. For example, it fails to mention even once the past scholarship of Hugh Nibley on these documents and generally neglects the work of other scholars that can point to the strengths of the Book of Abraham and give tools for coping with the thorny issues. The openness about the conundrums of the Book of Abraham should be encouraged, but it should be balanced with at least an awareness that there are noteworthy positives that readers can weigh against the question marks, and that there are frameworks that can help faithful readers understand how a divinely revealed text can be produced by the same man who wanted to begin learning Egyptian and Hebrew after he had already provided divine translation. Such a balance is needed in a book from the Church dealing with such sensitive issues, where misunderstanding has led some people out of the Church. Sadly, in spite of its many achievements in opening the doors to the documents associated with the Book of Abraham, this book lacks the balance that is needed.

American Atheist, 2008

When Joseph Smith, Jr., wrote "The Book of Mormon," he claimed to have translated the novel scripture from golden plates inscribed in "Reformed Egyptian." Because an angel had promptly returned the plates to Heaven after his completion of the alleged translation, it was impossible to check the accuracy of his "translation" or to see if there had been any translation at all. Emboldened by the success of the "Book of Mormon," Smith went on to "translate" further "scriptures," including the "Book of Abraham." Unlike the "Book of Mormon," this alleged holy book was "translated" from Egyptian papyri purchased from the traveling showman Michael Chandler. After publication of the new scripture, the original papyri were lost——allegedly burnt up in the Great Chicago Fire of 1876. Once again, Smith's "translation" could not be tested. But the discovery of Smith's "Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar" in 1966 showed step-by-step how Smith had forged the "Book of Abraham"---the scripture cited to justify barring Negroes from the Mormon Priesthood. In the same year the original papyri were discovered in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC. Examination of the papyrus that had been transcribed into the "Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar" showed that the anti-Negro verse had been "translated" from a lacuna in the papyrus.

Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, 2011

Vol. 5: Studies in the Book of Abraham Series. Provo, Utah: BYU

Advances in Ancient, Biblical and Near Eastern Research, 2023

This essay is an updated proposal for a material historical scroll approach to the formation of the Hebrew Bible, particularly the Pentateuch (cf. Carr in Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 2020). Since this approach draws on data concerning scroll practices in nearby ancient cultures, the article provides a brief survey of potentially significant aspects of ancient Egyptian, Levantine, Greek, Demotic and Second Temple Jewish practices surrounding literary scrolls—how compositions (or parts of them) were inscribed on them, scroll length ranges and types, and ways in which existing scrolls were revised. This preliminary survey suggests that a substantial shift occurred around early Hellenistic period toward development of scrolls with unusually high carrying capacity (both in writing density and length), facilitating somewhat of a media revolution in the amount of literary material that could be recorded on a single written object. Though possibly prompted in part by Greek writing practices and technologies, this development toward use of some high-carrying-capacity scrolls seems associated with some temple and priest-adjacent preservationist scribal contexts where scribes used such high-carrying-capacity scrolls to conserve indigenous literary traditions amidst a broader environment dominated by another language. These and other findings have significant implications for exploring the complex relation between written artifacts and memorized/performed textual works in the Ancient Near East and the development of models for the inscription of Hebrew textual traditions across scrolls in the pre-Hellenistic and Greco-Roman periods. In addition, the article proposes several measures and terms that might be adapted to discuss scroll features across multiple culture areas, such as letter spaces (or the quadrat or other equivalent for Egyptian sign systems) per linear centimeter, cumulative line space, and square centimeters of white space per linear centimeter.

Since the first discoveries in a cave near Khirbet Qumran in 1947, the analogies and differences between the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS) and New Testament texts as well as the relevance of the Scrolls for the study of the early Jesus movement have been intensely debated. The Scrolls have deeply influenced NT scholarship and opened up new paths for perceiving Early Christianity in line with contemporary Judaism. Due to the delayed publication of the majority of fragmentary texts, the full range of insights could only be gained since the 1990s, when public access to all manuscripts had been granted, and scholars critically revisited earlier theories and popular views on the basis of the evidence of the entire corpus. Although some premature speculations about direct personal connections between Qumran or 'the Essenes' and the Jesus movement had to be rejected as unsustainable, the information gained from the Scrolls has had enormous effects on the understanding of John the Baptist, Jesus, Paul, the Synoptics, the Johannine writings, and other texts. Apart from that, there are substantial insights from the Scrolls regarding the language and literary genres used in the NT, contemporary techniques of transmission, forms of Scrip-tural interpretation, processes of authorization and canonization, eschatological expectations and mes-sianic imaginations, and other theological topics. In all these fields, the evidence from the Scrolls has substantially changed our perception of emerging Christianity. As the impact on the study of Jesus, Paul, the Synoptics and John is discussed in separate chapters in this volume, 1 this overview will assemble some important insights from the Scrolls for the various fields mentioned. Before that, I will provide some information about the scholarly context of the discovery and publication of the Scrolls within the development of NT scholarship and briefly review some preliminary issues of relating the Scrolls with 'Christian' figures, groups, or texts.