The Book Of Abraham (Mormon)

           The Book of Abraham

            The Book of Abraham ("BoA") is Joseph Smith's translation of some Egyptian papyrus scrolls that came into his possession in 1835.   He stated that one of the scrolls was written by the biblical Abraham "by his own hand."   Smith's translation is now accepted as scripture by the LDS church, as part of its Pearl of Great Price.   Smith also produced an "Egyptian Grammar" based on his translation.             Modern scholars of ancient Egyptian have also translated the scrolls, and they agree unanimously that the scrolls, which are now in the possession of the Mormon church, are genuine, but they are common Egyptian funeral scrolls, entirely pagan in nature, having nothing to do with Abraham, and from a period 2000 years later than Abraham.   The "Grammar" has been said by Egyptologists to prove that Smith had no notion of the Egyptian language.   It is pure fantasy: he made it up.   (For details, see the links here.)
            But even if we did not have the actual papyrus and the testimony of the Egyptologists, proving that it is a hoax, we could recognize the Book of Abraham as such because of the linguistic anachronisms in the text of Smith's "translation."   In considering the material below, remember that Abraham supposedly lived somewhere between 2100 and 1700 B.C., according to most Bible chronologists.

I found the following linguistic anachronisms by my own careful reading of the text of the BoA and by researching the words in standard reference works.   After I had completed my research I discovered that Stephen E. Thompson had already covered the same ground in his article "Egyptology and the Book of Abraham" in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, 28:1:143, Spring 1995.   I was gratified to see that my conclusions were confirmed by Thompson, who is a professional Egyptologist.

"Pharaoh"

            The BoA uses the word "Pharaoh" as the name of rulers of Egypt (Abr 1:6, 20, 26) and says that the meaning of the word (1:20) is "king by royal blood."   The first ruler named "Pharaoh" is identified as a great-grandson of Noah (Abr 1:25).

            The linguistic problem is that the word "pharaoh" originally meant "great house."   It did not become a title for the king until the beginning of the New Kingdom (18th Dynasty), which began about 1567 B.C.   That usage is unknown in Palestine until after 1000 B.C.   According to Funk & Wagnall's New Standard Bible Dictionary, article "Pharaoh": "It is certain that in Abraham's time the kings of Egypt were not as yet called Pharaohs."   At no time in Egypt was the word used as the actual name of any king.   Of course, Genesis has the same anachronism (12:15), but no one has claimed that Genesis was written by Abraham or a contemporary of Abraham.

"Chaldea"

            Abraham, according to the BoA, lived in the "land of the Chaldeans" (1:1) which was governed by Pharaoh (1:8-20).   A place of sacrifice there had an Egyptian name, "Potiphar's Hill" (1:20).             There are multiple anachronisms here.
            "Chaldeans" do not appear in history until the 12th century B.C., quite a few centuries after Abraham lived.   The earliest mention of them in historical records is in the 9th century B.C., in Assyrian records.   It was not until 721 B.C. that they established themselves, by seizing the throne of Babylon, ultimately establishing a Chaldean dynasty in Babylonia, which ruled from 625 to 539 B.C.   It is only after this that the term "Chaldea" or "land of the Chaldees" came to be used for "Babylon".

            This anachronism also occurs in Genesis (11:31), but, as noted above, no one has claimed that Genesis was written by Abraham or a contemporary of Abraham.
            There is no historical evidence that Egypt controlled any part of Mesopotamia at any time when Abraham might have lived.   Thus, it is a gross error to claim that Egyptian sacrifices were taking place in "Chaldea" at a sacrificial place with an Egyptian name.

"Egyptus"

            The BoA says that "Egyptus" was the wife of Ham (the son of Noah) and the mother of Pharaoh who established the first government of Egypt. (Abr 1:23).   The name "Egyptus" is obviously intended to be the source of the name of the country.   But here is the linguistic problem: the name "Egypt" is not Egyptian, but Greek ('Aigyptos'), and thus was not used for the name of the country until the Greeks had contact with it, long after Abraham's time.             The Greek name is a corruption of an Egyptian name for the capital city of Memphis, 'Hat-kaptah'.   Perhaps the real name of Ham's wife was Hat-kaptah?   No, because Abr 1:23 says that "Egypt" is a "Chaldean" word (see previous section on "Chaldea"), and it means "forbidden".
            The Hebrew word for Egypt and the Egyptians is 'Mizraim,' which adds to the confusion, because the Bible says that Mizraim was a son of Ham (Gen 10:6, 13) and the ancestor not of the Egyptians, but of the Philistines.

"Kolob" and "Kokaubeam"

            "Kokob" and "Kokaubeam" appear at Abr 3:13, and are interpreted respectively as "star" and "stars".   These are genuine Hebrew words.   The other words in that passage ("shinehah" for the sun, "olea" for the moon) are not genuine.   "Kolob" (Abr 3), which is supposed to be the "star" nearest to the throne of God, is perhaps intended to be the Hebrew word 'keleb' ("dog") and may refer to the star Sirius, nicknamed the "Dog Star" (Alpha Canis Majoris), the brightest star in the northern-hemisphere sky.

            Do these Hebrew words provide weighty evidence in defense of the Book of Abraham?   Hardly.   At the time Smith was producing the Book of Abraham he was also intently studying Hebrew with a private tutor. 
 
            Here, too, Joseph Smith was perhaps trying to be too clever: Abraham lived at a time long before the Hebrew language had even developed.   According to the article "Hamito-Semitic Languages" in The Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th ed., Macr 8:592, Hebrew did not develop until the 13th century BC.   Thus, Abraham could not possibly have spoken Hebrew.

Linguistic Arguments in Favor of Mormon Claims

            Mormon apologists also use linguistic evidence in support of Mormon claims.   The supposed similarity of Book of Mormon names to genuine Egyptian or Hebrew names has already been discussed above. The most important of the other claims will be discussed here.

Wordprint Studies

            Some Mormon apologists claim that wordprint studies confirm one claim of the Book of Mormon, namely that it is the work of multiple authors (Nephi, Jacob, Alma, etc.).   "Wordprint" refers to a statistical analysis (usually done by computer) of different texts to discover supposedly subconcious stylistic peculiarities of the author(s), such as preference for particular phrases or words.   (See for example the official Mormon publication Ensign, January 2000, "Mounting Evidences for the Book of Mormon".)

            The techniques used in wordprint studies are still subject to much debate (not just among those studying Mormon writings) and the basic premises are questioned.   Even one prominent Mormon apologist, John Tvedtnes, has rejected such evidence for the Book of Mormon (see Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, 33:1:85-87).   For other criticism of these studies, see Issue #84 of the Salt Lake City Messenger, "New Computer Study".and "Book of Mormon Wordprints Re-examined" by D. James Croft.

Chiasm in the Book of Mormon

            Mormon apologists have made much of the discovery of chiasms in the Book of Mormon.   A chiasm (also called "chiasmus"), named after the Greek letter 'chi' which resembles the letter 'X', is a literary device where a series of statements or phrases is followed by a reversed restatement of the same phrases: A, B, C, D, d, c, b, a.             This literary device was discovered in the Bible in the 19th century, and Mormon apologists discovered it then also in the Book of Mormon.   They present this as evidence that the Book of Mormon is divinely inspired, since chiasm had not yet been recognized in the Bible when Joseph Smith produced the Book of Mormon.

            Chiasm loses all of its persuasiveness as evidence for the divinity of the Book of Mormon when one realizes that it is a literary device which can occur quite naturally in non-divine writings as well, and that an author need not be consciously aware of the device, nor know its name, to make literary use of it.   Joseph Smith's diary, for example, does not claim to be divinely inspired nor to be an ancient document, yet the entry for April 1, 1834, is an excellent example of chiasm:

A  the Lord shall destroy him 
   B  who has lifted his heel against me even that wicked man Docter P. H[u]rlbut 
       C  he [will] deliver him to the fowls of heaven 
              and 
       c  his bones shall be cast to the blast of the wind 
   b  [for] he lifted his [arm] against the Almity 
a  therefore the Lord shall destroy him 

            The third president of the church, John Taylor, used chiasm quite naturally, and no Mormon claims that the chiasm in his reflections are either evidence of divine inspiration or of ancient origin:

A  And He in His own person 
   B  bore the sins of all, 
      C  and atoned for them 
         D  by the sacrifice of Himself, 
            E  so there came upon Him the weight and agony 
               F  of ages 
               f  and generations, 
            e  the indescribable agony consequent upon 
         d  this great sacrificial 
      c  atonement 
   b  wherein He bore the sins of the world, 
a  and suffered in His own person the consequences of an eternal    
   law of God broken by man 

(The above examples are from Brent Lee Metcalfe, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Vol.26, No.3, pp.162-164.)

            A tongue-in-cheek article in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Vol 33 No. 4, Winter 2000, p 163, by Robert Patterson, "Hebraicisms, Chiasmus, and Other Internal Evidence for Ancient Authorship in 'Green Eggs and Ham'" demonstrated that the same arguments which Mormon apologists use to show that chiasm is evidence for the Book of Mormon can also show that Dr. Seuss' children's book "Green Eggs and Ham" is also ancient:

I am Sam. 
Sam I am. 
 
I do not like them, Sam-I-am. 
  I do not like green eggs and ham. 
    Would you like them here or there? 
      I would not like them here or there. 
    I would not like them anywhere. 
  I do not like green eggs and ham. 
I do not like them, Sam-I-am. 

            Vernal Holley, in his book Book of Mormon Authorship: A Closer Look, 3rd ed., p 26, (on line here) points out that Solomon Spaulding's "Manuscript Story" (also called "Manuscript Found"), considered by many - including Holley - to be a major source of Joseph Smith's Book of Mormon, also contains quite a few examples of chiasmus.   And yet no Mormon apologist would consider that fact as evidence that Spaulding's story is actually Hebrew scripture.

Claims of Similar Vocabulary - Semitic and Native American

            Some Mormon apologists point to comments by Dr. Roger William Westcott, linguistics professor at Drew University, and Dr. Mary Ritchie Key, who have written on the similarities between many words in Native American languages and the languages of the Bible lands.   Westcott and Key, however, did not base their comments on their own research, but rather on research by Mormon Brian Stubbs.   Stubbs simply scoured vocabularies to compile his listing.   However, similarities of vocabulary (as any real comparative linguist should know) are not enough to establish a connection between languages.   There are far too many such similarities that are pure coincidence.   For example, Greek 'ho' means "the" and Hebrew 'ha' means "the" Does that indicate that Greek and Hebrew are related?   Absolutely not.   

Aztec 'pax' means "war" and Latin 'pax' means the opposite: "peace".   Is that evidence that Aztec and Latin are related?   No.   Greek 'theos' and Latin 'deus' both mean "god".   Striking similarity, but they are completely different roots, even though Latin and Greek ARE related.

            I would guess that a careful search of Chinese and English would turn up a list of words with similar appearance and similar meaning.   Would any linguist accept that as evidence that Chinese and English are related, or that one is derived from the other?

            Mormon apologists defend Stubbs' work by pointing out that he also shows patterns of sound shifts, such as have been observed in known language families such as the Indo-European group (which includes most modern and ancient European languages), in addition to the similarities in individual vocabulary items.   However, Stubbs does not present nearly the quantity of examples that support the Indo-European sound shifts (the most widespread IE shift is known as "Grimm's Law").

            Stubbs is Mormon and writing for a Mormon audience.   He has flummoxed two retired linguistic professors (Key is now dead, actually).   What about the thousands of other reputable linguists who are not convinced?   Only lay people are convinced by vocabulary lists such as Stubbs'.   (For many more such vocabulary similarities, see http://members.aol.com/yahyam/coincidence.html.)

            For another example of an attempt to use vocabulary similarities to support the Book of Mormon see the article "Lehi in the Pacific" by L. Dwayne Samuelson here with my rebuttal.

Conclusion

            In light of the many linguistic blunders and erroneous translations made by this man who claimed to be a divinely inspired "translator," it is difficult to see why anyone with any understanding of linguistic phenomena would accept his claims.   Joseph Smith was quite ignorant of languages, in spite of his boasting of his abilities and divine inspiration, and when one examines his linguistic claims and his supposedly divine linguistic accomplishments, one must conclude that if his god inspired him, his god was as poor a linguist as he was.             Mormonism's claims fail on many other fronts besides linguistics.   But even a few of the gross linguistic errors as discussed here should be sufficient to show that Smith's claims are no more than the boastings of an ignorant (although charismatic) human being.

© 2003, 2007 Richard Packham http://packham.n4m.org/linguist.htm