Writings: Latter-day SaintsThe Book of Abraham Manuscripts6 of 10

Writings: Latter-day Saints

The Book of Abraham Manuscripts

The Book of Abraham manuscripts are English copies of the first part of the Book of Abraham, made in Kirtland, Ohio, in 1835 and Nauvoo, Illinois, in 1842. The 1835 copies carry Egyptian characters. The Church History Library holds them. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Brigham Young University scholars, and critical scholars read them differently.

Last reviewed:

Three dates, kept apart

  1. The text's date: the tradition's view

    1835 to 1842, when the church teaches Joseph Smith translated the Book of Abraham, with no year in the sources used for Abraham's own writing (the church's essay says summer and fall of 1835 and spring of 1842, and the Joseph Smith Papers say the months after the summer 1835 purchase and early 1842; the bar marks the translation only)

  2. The text's date: critical scholars' view

    1835 to 1842, the Book of Abraham composed in Smith's time, as the Egyptologist Robert Ritner reads it (he holds it a nineteenth-century composition; Edward Ashment holds the copies to be scribal copies of Smith's dictated translation; Dan Vogel, as Cheryl Bruno reports his book, holds that Smith originated the Egyptian-language documents; the years are the Joseph Smith Papers' dating of the dictation, because none of them names the years of the composition)

  3. This copy made

    about July to November 1835 for the three Kirtland copies, and February to March 1842 for the Nauvoo copies, when the surviving manuscripts were written (the Joseph Smith Papers' ranges, for which their source notes give no method except a journal entry cited for the March 1842 leaf; John Gee dates the earliest copy probably to early October 1835, and Brian Hauglid lists the Williams and Parrish copies as late 1835; the strip draws 1835 to 1842)

  4. This copy found

    1937, when Wilford C. Wood bought Manuscript C, the Kirtland copy kept by Emma Smith's family, and gave it to the church that year (the Joseph Smith Papers' source notes say Manuscripts A and B were presumably stored with the Egyptian material in the Historian's Office inventories, which suggests continuous institutional custody, and docketing suggests the same for the February 1842 copy)

All four rows share one timeline. A row with no marker says why in words. How ancient texts are dated.

What it is

The Book of Abraham manuscripts are handwritten English copies, on paper leaves, of the first part of the Book of Abraham.1 The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints holds that book, a record of the biblical patriarch Abraham, as scripture.2 Scribes, clerks who took down Joseph Smith's dictation, made three in Kirtland, Ohio, in 1835. Frederick G. Williams wrote Manuscript A, Warren Parrish wrote B, and Parrish and William W. Phelps wrote C, which covers Abraham 1:1 to 2:18 on ten pages.345 In Nauvoo, Illinois, in 1842, Willard Richards made a copy that appears to depend on C and wrote a leaf with Abraham 3:18 to 26.67

John Gee, an Egyptologist at Brigham Young University, which the church founded, supports, and guides, counts seven known manuscripts, none the original and none complete.8910 Egyptian characters, most of them copied from the papyri, stand in the left margin of the 1835 copies.1

How the copy was dated

The Joseph Smith Papers, the church's own scholarly edition, date the three Kirtland copies to about July to November 1835. They date Richards's first Nauvoo copy to about February 1842 and the leaf to 8 to about 15 March 1842.36711 Their source notes give no method for the 1835 and February 1842 ranges and report no physical test; for the leaf they cite Smith's journal entry of 8 March 1842.7

Others date the Kirtland copies differently. Gee dates the Williams copy probably to early October 1835, noting that a long repeated passage in it is typical of copying. His timeline says 3 to 7 October; his table says 3 to 29 October for it and 29 October 1835 to 1 April 1836 for the Parrish copies.8 Brian Hauglid, an associate professor of ancient scripture at the same university when he wrote, lists the Williams and Parrish copies as late 1835 and Phelps's lines as summer 1835.12 For the methods, see how ancient texts are dated.

The text: its date and authorship

The strip marks the Book of Abraham text, not the copies. In the church's account Joseph Smith translated it in 1835 and again in 1842; the sources used give no year for Abraham's own writing.12 The critical bar marks the same two periods of dictation, because Ritner, who holds the book a nineteenth-century composition, names the century, not the years of composition.13

The tradition's view

This column carries the church's essay of 2016 and then scholars at Brigham Young University, who differ among themselves. The essay says Joseph Smith translated the book in 1835 and 1842, that no eyewitness account survives, and that the grammar documents' relation to the book is not fully understood.2

Gee writes that the attribution to Smith of the documents in Phelps's handwriting, with additions by Parrish, that use characters from the Book of Breathings depends more on assumption and assertion than on demonstration.14 Kerry Muhlestein, a scholar of ancient scripture at the university, holds that scribal errors mark the margin-character copies as later copies, not the first translation. He holds that the characters appear sometimes to overwrite the English, which would make them later additions.1516

Hauglid holds that the language study and the translation ran at about the same time. Separating them too rigidly, he writes, would likely do violence to a better understanding of the historical context.12 Terryl Givens, a Maxwell Institute fellow at the university, writes, as Richard Bushman reports in BYU Studies, that Smith was apparently wrong about the facsimiles and may have been about the narrative. He proposes studying instead the workings of Smith's prophetic imagination.1718

Scholars of the manuscripts: Ritner, Ashment, and, at second hand, Vogel

Robert Ritner, a University of Chicago Egyptologist, holds that the Egyptian signs beside the English text in Parrish's copies come from column 2 of the Horos papyrus. He calls that papyrus the basis of the text and holds that no lost papyrus was used. He also holds that whose hand wrote the copies does not matter, since Smith directed the work.13

Edward Ashment, whose standing the article does not state, holds that Smith matched characters from that papyrus to Abraham, and that the copies are scribal copies of Smith's dictated translation. He reports that the Egyptian line a manuscript turns into more than 870 English words, as Abraham 1:1 to 19, reads as a ten-word sentence about Osiris and a pool.19

Dan Vogel, as Cheryl Bruno, a reviewer for the Association for Mormon Letters, summarizes his book of 2021, argues that Smith originated the Egyptian-language documents, manuscripts that the Joseph Smith Papers tie to deciphering the papyri's characters.1 He holds that they were written before the Book of Abraham was dictated, as Smith's early efforts to understand the papyri and persuade followers that his translation came from them.20

How it was found

Gee writes that Willard Richards and W. W. Phelps, both church historians, brought several of the manuscripts to Utah.8 The Joseph Smith Papers say Manuscripts A and B were presumably stored with the Egyptian material listed in the Historian's Office inventories of 1846, 1855, and 1858, which they write suggests continuous institutional custody.34

Manuscript C stayed with Emma Smith after 1844 and passed to Lewis Bidamon's son Charles, who sold it to the collector Wilford C. Wood in 1937. Wood gave it to the church later that year.5 Richards's Nauvoo copies were stored apart from the others and were not on the 1956 microfilm of the Historian's Office's Book of Abraham and Egyptian-language materials.67

What it shows, and what it does not

The copies show that several scribes wrote the English text of the first chapters in 1835 and that Richards made a copy in 1842 that appears to depend on C. Ritner traces the Egyptian characters beside the 1835 text to the Horos papyrus.56113 The editors suggest that Williams and Parrish created portions of Manuscripts A and B by taking down dictation and perhaps by copying part of a lost version.3

They do not show who composed the English, since none is the original. The church's essay says no eyewitness account of the translation survives, while Ritner points to Parrish's letter of 1838.213 The editors write that the sequence of the Kirtland copies and the Egyptian-language documents is unknown and that the nature of their link is uncertain.13 Ritner and Ashment each argue one thesis in the works cited here, and Bruno reports Vogel's at second hand.

See also

Sources

  1. Joseph Smith Papers editors. Introduction to Revelations and Translations: Volume 4, Book of Abraham and Related Manuscripts. The Joseph Smith Papers (Church Historian's Press), sections on the Egyptian papyri and the Egyptian-language documents. Accessed 2026-11-03.
  2. Translation and Historicity of the Book of Abraham. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Gospel Topics Essays), 2016. Accessed 2026-11-03.
  3. Joseph Smith Papers editors. Book of Abraham Manuscript, circa July-circa November 1835-A [Abraham 1:4-2:6]. The Joseph Smith Papers (The Church Historian's Press), the source note and historical introduction on page 1. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  4. Joseph Smith Papers editors. Book of Abraham Manuscript, circa July-circa November 1835-B [Abraham 1:4-2:2]. The Joseph Smith Papers (The Church Historian's Press), the source note and historical introduction on page 1. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  5. Joseph Smith Papers editors. Book of Abraham Manuscript, circa July-circa November 1835-C [Abraham 1:1-2:18]. The Joseph Smith Papers (The Church Historian's Press), the source note and historical introduction (page 2 of the document). Accessed 2026-11-06.
  6. Joseph Smith Papers editors. Book of Abraham Manuscript and Explanation of Facsimile 1, circa February 1842 [Abraham 1:1-2:18]. The Joseph Smith Papers (The Church Historian's Press), the source note and historical introduction on page 1. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  7. Joseph Smith Papers editors. Book of Abraham Manuscript, 8-circa 15 March 1842 [Abraham 3:18-26]. The Joseph Smith Papers (The Church Historian's Press), the source note and historical introduction on page 1. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  8. John Gee. Joseph Smith and the Papyri (in An Introduction to the Book of Abraham). Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, and Deseret Book, 2017, 2017, the section 'The Manuscripts of the Book of Abraham' and the translation timeline. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  9. Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, Brigham Young University. John Gee (staff directory page). Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, Brigham Young University. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  10. About BYU (mission statement). Brigham Young University. Accessed 2026-11-04.
  11. About the Project. The Joseph Smith Papers (The Church Historian's Press). Accessed 2026-11-04.
  12. Brian M. Hauglid. The Book of Abraham and the Egyptian Project: 'A Knowledge of Hidden Languages' (in Approaching Antiquity: Joseph Smith and the Ancient World). Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, and Deseret Book, 2015, pp. 474 to 511, 2015, pp. 474 to 511; the tables of manuscripts and the closing conclusions. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  13. Robert K. Ritner. 'Translation and Historicity of the Book of Abraham': A Response. Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures (ISAC), University of Chicago, research archive, the whole response (19 pages). Accessed 2026-11-06.
  14. John Gee. Frequently Asked Questions (in An Introduction to the Book of Abraham). Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, and Deseret Book, 2017, 2017, the whole chapter as posted by the Religious Studies Center. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  15. Kerry Muhlestein. Egyptian Papyri and the Book of Abraham: Some Questions and Answers. Religious Educator 11, no. 1 (2010), pp. 91 to 108 (Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University), 2010, pp. 91 to 108; the sections 'The Source of the Book of Abraham' and 'Kirtland Egyptian Papers'. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  16. Religious Education, Brigham Young University. Kerry Muhlestein (faculty directory page). Religious Education, Brigham Young University. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  17. Richard Lyman Bushman. Review of The Pearl of Greatest Price: Mormonism's Most Controversial Scripture, by Terryl Givens with Brian M. Hauglid (Oxford University Press, 2019). BYU Studies 59, no. 4, p. 181, the review on page 181 and following (the page gives the volume and issue but not the year of issue, so the year is left blank). Accessed 2026-11-06.
  18. Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, Brigham Young University. Terryl Givens (staff directory page). Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, Brigham Young University. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  19. Edward H. Ashment. Joseph Smith's Identification of 'Abraham' in Papyrus JS 1, the 'Breathing Permit of Hor'. Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 33, no. 4 (Winter 2000), pp. 121 to 126, 2000, pp. 121 to 126. Accessed 2026-11-06.
  20. Cheryl L. Bruno. Vogel, Book of Abraham Apologetics: A Review and Critique (review). Association for Mormon Letters, Reviews, the whole review. Accessed 2026-11-06.