Book of Abraham

The Facsimile Found: The Recovery of Joseph Smith’s Papyrus Manuscripts: An Interview with Dr. Fischer

Lynn Travers

DIALOGUE: On Monday, November 27, 1967, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City presented a number of documents to President N. Eldon Tanner of the First Presidency, who accepted them on behalf of…

Formulas and Facts: A Response to John Gee

Andrew Cook

Dialogue 45.3 (Fall 2012): 1–10
In Winter 2010, Chris Smith and I published an article in Dialogue demonstrating that no more than ~56 cm of papyrus can be missing from the interior of the scroll of Hôr—the papyrus Joseph Smith identified as the Book of Abraham. John Gee has responded by claiming that our method is “anything but accurate” and that it “glaringly underestimates the length of the scroll.” He states that “Two different formulas have been published for estimating the original length of a scroll,” then attempts to show that “Hoffmann’s formula approximates the actual length of the papyrus,” whereas “Cook and Smith’s formula predicts a highly inaccurate length.” The fact is, the two formulas are completely equivalent. They are both exact expressions of an Archimedean spiral and they yield precisely the same results, if correctly applied.

The Original Length of the Scroll of Hôr

Andrew Cook

Dialogue 43.4 (Winter 2010): 1–42
The purpose of this paper is to introduce a robust methodology that eliminates the guesswork in determining winding locations by visual inspection of crease marks or lacunae features, and to determine whether the missing interior section of the Hôr scroll could have been long enough to accommodate the Book of Abraham. Fortunately, this is a question that can be definitively answered by examining the physical characteristics of the extant portions of the scroll. The haste and greed of Michael Chandler provide the key to unlocking this mystery.

The “Breathing Permit of Hor” Thirty-Four Years Later

Robert K. Ritner

Dialogue 33.4 (Winter 2000): 91 – 119
In 1967, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York made a gift to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints of eleven papyrus fragments once owned by Joseph Smith and employed as the basis for “The Book of Abraham.”

Joseph Smith’s Identification of “Abraham” in Papyrus: JS the “Breathing Permit of Hor”

Edward H. Ashment

Dialogue 33.4 (Winter 2000): 91 – 119

In 1967, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York made a gift to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints of eleven papyrus fragments once owned by Joseph Smith and employed as the basis for “The Book of Abraham.”

The Book of Abraham and the Islamic Qisas al-Anbiya’ (Tales of the Prophets) Extant Literature

Bradley Cook

Dialogue 33.4 (Winter 2000): 137 – 146

“Perhaps the most controversial and intensely contested revelatory claim of Joseph Smith Jr. is his translation of ancient papyri ostensibly written by the hand of Abraham.”

Egyptology and the Book of Abraham

Stephen E. Thompson

Dialogue, 28.1 (Spring 1995): 143 – 161
The matter which I propose to examine is whether the “present understanding of Egyptian religious practice” supports Joseph Smith’s explanations of the facsimiles found in the Book of Abraham. In addition, I will discuss the contribution which a study of Egyptian history can maketo our understanding of the nature of this book of scripture.

“That Is the Handwriting of Abraham”

Milan D. Smith Jr.

Dialogue, 23.4 (Winter 1990): 167 – 169
In his stimulating article, “Knowing Brother Joseph Again: The Book of Abraham and Joseph Smith as Translator” (DIALOGUE, Winter 1989), Karl Sandberg seeks to explain the Prophet Joseph Smith’s translation of the Book of Abraham almost exclusively in terms of seership (where one does not necessarily actually view the material being deciphered, as opposed to using prophetic gifts to bring to light what was previously hidden or unknown).

The Odyssey of Thomas Stuart Ferguson

Stan Larson

Dialogue, 23.4 (Winter 1990): 55–93

The odyssey of Ferguson is a quest for religious certitude through archaeological evidences, an attempt at scholarly verification of theological claims. Early in his career, Thomas Stuart Ferguson was instrumental in reducing our conception of the geography of the Book of Mormon from nearly the whole of both North and South America to the more limited area of southern Mexico and Central America. In the middle years of his career, he organized archaeological reconnaissance and fieldwork in the area of Mesoamerica. But in the last years of his career, he concluded that the archaeological evidence did not substantiate the Book of Mormon, and so he reduced (in his mind) the geography of the book to nothing at all in the real world.

Knowing Brother Joseph Again: The Book of Abraham, and Joseph Smith as Translator

Karl C. Sandberg

Dialogue 22.4 (Winter 1989): 17 – 38
“The problem took another turn when Joseph Smith’s papyri, which had been missing and presumed lost for eighty to ninety years, resurfaced in 1967 and were examined and translated by Egyptologists. One fragment of papyrus was identified as the ostensible source of the Book of Abraham, but it bore no relationship to the Book of Abraham either in content or subject matter.”

A Mormon Midrash?: LDS Creation Narratives Reconsidered

Anthony A. Hutchinson

Dialogue 21.4 (Winter 1989): 135 – 139
Latter-day Saints, with other groups in the Judeo-Christian tradition, accept as scripture the stories of creation found in Genesis 1-3 but are unique in accepting as scripture three other parallel versions of the same stories. These include chapters in the books of Moses and Abraham brought forth by Joseph Smith, Jr.

Dialogue Topic Pages #5: The Book of Abraham

(author)

This month, we are looking at the history of scholarship on the Book of Abraham. And this is an exciting time in this field.