Les historiens pensent que la plupart des papyrus furent détruits dans le grand incendie de Chicago en 1871. Vue de cette façon, la traduction de Joseph n’a pas été une traduction littérale des papyrus, comme le serait une traduction classique.

28. As John Whitmer observed, “Joseph the Seer saw these Record[s] and by the revelation of Jesus Christ could translate these records.”31. The problems are by no means limited to the Facsimiles, since the text itself includes anachronistic and impossible expressions (including a “Potiphar’s Hill” located in Ur of the Chaldees, Abraham 1:10) and situations (supposed Egyptian rites of human sacrifice in Ur conducted by a priest of Pharaoh “after the manner of the Egyptians,” Abraham 1: 11-12). The discovery of the fragments meant that readers could now see the hieroglyphs and characters immediately surrounding the vignette that became facsimile 1.26. Joseph Smith, « History, 1838–1856, volume B-1 [1 September 1834–2 November 1838] », p. 597. The identity of the underlying Egyptian text is particularly clear in the series Q, N and O, and these are discussed in detail below. Most scholars today locate “Chaldea” (or Ur) in southern Mesopotamia, removed from the area of Egyptian influence, but cogent arguments have been made for a northern location, within the realm of Egyptian influence. Thus has arisen a host of alternative defenses for the Book of Abraham, questioning the meaning of the word “translation,” the length of the original papyri, the possibility of a now-lost section with the Abraham text, etc. Jay M. Todd, « New Light on Joseph Smith’s Egyptian Papyri », Improvement Era, février 1968, p. 40-41. The two manuscripts copy the same Egyptian signs for the same English text, with pages J and R being duplicates, as are pages K and Q, L and N, M and O. Abraham 2:11. 5-8), particularly in a society where political and religious issues are not sharply distinguished. There can be no reasonable dispute that Smith linked the image of Facsimile 1 to the Egyptian papyrus that he —in his own words— “translated.” As the original papyrus of Facsimile 1 has survived and is in fact the “Breathing Permit” of an Egyptian priest Hôr, the Hôr papyrus is without question the text that Smith used for his translation that produced the Book of Abraham.

In April 1829, Joseph received a revelation for Oliver Cowdery that taught that both intellectual work and revelation were essential to translating sacred records. Gee’s article is not honest in its title, its suppression of prior important scholarship, and its presentation of the principal actors. The transcription for the concluding page O of Parrish’s hand copy follows. 24. More to the point, however, while Muhlestein notes capital punishment for political rebellion and crimes against individuals and the state, including theft of temple property or resources, there is no parallel to the Book of Abraham’s intended “martyrdom” for refusing to worship the images of Egyptian gods. 23.

In his introduction to the volume, Tanner records that his Modern Microfilm Co. was contacted “in the early part of 1965” by a student at the Brigham Young University who had a typed copy of the “Egyptian Alphabet” hand copies, and that “later in the year another man loaned us a microfilm of the original document.” The microfilm reproductions found in the Tanner volume were printed from masters produced “in the early part of 1966,” the same year that the Tanner volume was published. “I show these things unto thee before ye go into Egypt,” the Lord says, “that ye may declare all these words.”42 Ancient texts repeatedly refer to Abraham instructing the Egyptians in knowledge of the heavens. commonly, Abraam is invoked together with Isaac and Jacob as in the long list of magical names in PGM XII, 287 (… Saphtha Nouchitha Abraan Isak Iakkobi …) or the probable targum extract in PGM XIII, 976. Before the 1822 decipherment of hieroglyphs by Jean-François Champollion in France, it had been wrongly assumed that the Egyptian writing system was purely symbolic, not phonetic.

1, 1842, 703–6, available at josephsmithpapers.org; “The Book of Abraham,” Times and Seasons, Mar. Deux exemples de l’Ancien et du Nouvel Empires,” GöttingerMiszellen 187 (2002): 11–21. Son histoire personnelle rapporte qu’en juillet 1835, il était « continuellement occupé à la traduction d’un alphabet pour le livre d’Abraham et à l’élaboration d’une grammaire de l’égyptien pratiqué par les anciens5. » Cette « grammaire », comme il l’appelait, consistait en colonnes de hiéroglyphes suivis de traductions anglaises, consignées dans un grand cahier par son secrétaire William W. Phelps. 22.

The word translation typically assumes an expert knowledge of multiple languages. Son journal personnel nous apprend ensuite qu’il traduisit les papyrus au printemps de 1842, après l’installation des saints à Nauvoo (Illinois). Henk Milde, “Vignetten-Forschung,” in Burkhard Backes and others, eds., Totenbuch-Forschungen (Wiesbaden, Germany: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2006), 221–31; Holger Kockelmann, Untersuchungen zu den späten Totenbuch-Handschriften auf Mumienbinden (Wiesbaden, Germany: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2008), 2:212–14; Valérie Angenot, “Discordance entre texte et image. Au sujet de l’absence d’unanimité parmi les égyptologues, voir, par exemple, John Gee, « A Method for Studying the Facsimiles », FARMS Review, vol. 19, n° 1, 2007, p. 348-351, et Hugh Nibley, The Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri: An Egyptian Endowment, 2e éd., Provo (Utah), Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 2005, p. 51-53. Kevin L. Barney, “On Elkenah as Canaanite El,” Journal of the Book of Mormon and Other Restoration Scripture 19, no. 16. Yet the LDS paper attempts to engage in scholarly debate from a one-sided position, repeatedly citing in the footnotes the same limited set of apologists who are primarily church employees at BYU in Provo. Van Orden, “Writing to Zion: The William W. Phelps Kirtland Letters (1835–1836),” BYU Studies 33, no. This view assumes a broader definition of the words translator and translation.33 According to this view, Joseph’s translation was not a literal rendering of the papyri as a conventional translation would be. The book of Abraham speaks disapprovingly of human sacrifice offered on an altar in Chaldea. Rune Nyord and Annette Kjølby (Oxford, U.K.: Archaeopress, 2009), 6–7, 12–13. These artifacts had been uncovered by Antonio Lebolo, a former cavalryman in the Italian army. The most extensive treatment of Lebolo and his excavations, though dated in some particulars, is H. Donl Peterson, The Story of the Book of Abraham: Mummies, Manuscripts, and Mormonism (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1995), 36–85. The problems are by no means limited to the Facsimiles, since the text itself includes anachronistic and impossible expressions (including a “Potiphar’s Hill” located in Ur of the Chaldees, Abraham 1:10) and situations (supposed Egyptian rites of human sacrifice in Ur conducted by a priest of Pharaoh “after the manner of the Egyptians,” Abraham 1: 11-12). The book still has its uses and significance, but not for the ancient world of Egypt and Abraham. Au lieu de cela, les objets tangibles auraient fourni une occasion de méditer, de réfléchir et de recevoir une révélation. Eyewitnesses spoke of “a long roll” or multiple “rolls” of papyrus.32 Since only fragments survive, it is likely that much of the papyri accessible to Joseph when he translated the book of Abraham is not among these fragments. See also footnote 19.

In combination with other borrowed Old Testament names, Abraham (in varying spellings) occurs as a name of power throughout the magical papyri, but there is no special connection with the lion bed.

That section of the papyrus was not reproduced in the Book of Abraham or any other publication until the rediscovery of the Smith papyri in New York in 1967 and the publication of sepia photographs in The Improvement Era in January and February of 1968.