Charles M. Larson

A very detailed and endnoted little book on the Joseph Smith Papyri, the chunks of papyrus that Joseph Smith used to "translate" the Book of Abraham, part of the Utah LDS church's Pearl of Great Price, part of their sacred scriptures. (Some other Mormon churches do not accept the book as divinely inspired.) In 1835 a travelling mummy exhibit reached Kirtland, Ohio, where most Mormons were located at that time. Smith and his cohorts purchased the papyrus documents with the exhibit and Smith claimed, rather boldly that one was the written records of the patriarch Abraham "by his own hand upon papyrus" and the other was written by Joseph. He then set to work translating the texts, claiming some of the hieroglyphics resembled the "Reformed Egyptian" figures of the Golden Plates of Nephi, which he had used to translate the Book of Mormon. The result was the Book of Abraham. Over the next several decades, Egyptologists said the work's history and woodcut figures were bunk, but, luckily for the LDS church, the papyri were presumed destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire.

They weren't. Most of the remaining scraps turned up New York, and Egyptologists translated the documents: they were nothing more than funerary texts, cheat sheets from the Book of the Dead for the afterlife. And they were from about 400 BC, not the time of Abraham. The book discusses the papyri, their history, their "translation" by Joseph Smith, their rediscovery, and the various attempts by the Mormons to authenticate them, explain them away, and absolve Joseph Smith of any hucksterism. The book ably demonstrates that Joseph Smith either (a) duped his followers by claiming he could translate the papyri (the text is rather self-serving, filling gaps in the Book of Mormon on such things as priesthood, lying, and pre-mortal existence); (b) or Joseph Smith was actually deluded enough to believe he could translate the papyri (ditto ditto ditto). Any other conclusions are hard to justify: the papyri have nothing to do with the text of Book of Abraham or the patriarch, and it is hard to conclude that Smith did not use these documents to create the Book of Abraham. The evidence is just too plain to think otherwise.

There is a bit of anti-Mormon polemic here, the author is an ex-Mormon, but it is still rather accessible and easy-to-read. The book cites the leading figures in the argument, and there is a full-color photographic reproduction of the papyri. All in all, a good exposé.… (mere)