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The Nephite “interpreters” described in the Book of Mormon—later called the Urim and Thummim—may not have functioned as literal spectacles at all. Drawing on archaeological and linguistic evidence, Mike Ash argues that they fit naturally within ancient Mesoamerican traditions of ritual “shiners”: reflective stones used in sacred divination, often mounted in breastplates, associated with caves, sealed bundles, and complementary light/dark symbolism.
Rather than being an odd anomaly, Joseph Smith’s translation instruments—including the stone in the hat—intersect meaningfully with both Israelite temple symbolism and Mesoamerican ritual culture. The interpreters reflect covenant continuity across cultures, not contradiction.
Questions about the Book of Mormon interpreters—and Joseph Smith’s use of a stone in a hat—often arise because the details do not neatly match common biblical assumptions.
Ancient cultures, including those in Mesoamerica, used reflective stones, mirrors, and sacred regalia in ritual contexts associated with divine communication. When viewed within that broader historical framework, the Nephite interpreters align with established traditions involving “shiners,” breastplates, sacred bundles, caves, and complementary light/dark symbolism.
This approach situates the Book of Mormon translation within recognizable ancient patterns rather than isolating it from them. It highlights intersections between Israelite temple concepts, Mesoamerican ritual practice, and Restoration scripture.
For Latter-day Saints exploring questions about the translation, this framework provides historical and cultural context for understanding the interpreters and their role in bringing forth the Book of Mormon.
Mike Ash has been a member of Fair for more than 20 years. He’s been featured in nearly 90 podcasts, 30 videos, and has more than two decades of writing LDS themed material. You’ll find some of his material in our bookstore. He has written for Ensign, Sunstone, Neil A. Maxwell Institute’s Farm Review, Dialogue, Journal of Mormon Thought, and of course, he’s well known to us at FAIR because he’s been a volunteer for a long time and answered lots of questions online.
Mike Ash: It’s an honor to be here again today. It was 25 years ago, a quarter of a century ago, that I attended the first FAIR conference. And other than the Covid shut down where everything was electronic. I haven’t missed one since. And I think this is my 10th presentation for FAIR. So almost batting one out of three. So it’s exciting to be here and see the familiar faces.
The title of my presentation is The Mesoamerican Urim and Thummim. And as the title suggests, I assume a Mesoamerican geographic model for the Book of Mormon. So get that out of the way already.
Joseph Smith, when he opened the stone box, what he found inside, obviously, was the plates, the breastplate, and what was called by the Nephites as the interpreters, and the early latter day Saints referred to sometimes as spectacles. And this was the device that Joseph Smith used to translate the Book of Mormon plates before he started using his seer stone.
The arguments I’m about to present were originally part of a chapter in my book Rethinking Revelation, and the Human Element in Scripture.
And then I distilled this down into a booklet form for those people that didn’t want to read through the entire book and just get it. And so I put it all into a book called A Mesoamerican Urim and Thummim, which was a volume in the little three part series that I’m working on, just on the book of Mormon.
I will argue in this presentation that the Nephite interpreters, which, like I said, were known as the urim and thummim to some to the early Latter-day Saints, originated from ritual scrying traditions consistent with those found among ancient New World shamans.
Now, what did the interpreters look like? There’s been a lot of speculation. We don’t really know. There’s been some interesting theories and possibilities. Don Bradley, in his wonderful book, The Lost 116 Pages (I highly recommend it), suggests that perhaps because they were referred to as looking like old fashioned spectacles, that they looked like lorgnettes, which are the eyeglasses from, earlier times, that were even older probably than Joseph Smith’s day. And perhaps even folding ones.
He gives an argument how they might have been shaped like this, and, it’s possible that’s how it is. In respect to Don, I disagree with how these might have looked and work this way. And Don might have a rebuttal to my position on it.
But in both my book, Unearthing the Book of Mormon, and my book Rethinking Revelation, I present arguments why I think that that doesn’t account for how the spectacles would have looked.
Martin Harris described the interpreters. He said:
The two stones set in a bow of silver were about two inches in diameter, perfectly round and about 5/8 of an inch thick at the center, but not so thick at the edges where they came into the bow.
They were joined by a round bar of silver, about 3/8 of an inch in diameter and about four inches long, which with the two stones would make eight inches.
Here’s kind of an AI Photoshop creation I made of how they might have looked, not including the rod that might have extended to the breastplate.That would have been a little bit harder to create in my quick rendition of this. But I think that that’s, in a real rough context, how they might have actually worked. They still would have looked like spectacles to some degree to the early Latter- day Saints in the overall shape, and that’s the way they referred to them. But they couldn’t have been worn on the face, and that’s why Joseph Smith struggled with them. In fact, he didn’t use them that way. He disassembled them and put them into his hat.
So it’s possible that the root of that design or type might have been found in some of the practices of early scrying techniques. The practice of scryer divining with reflective surfaces was widespread in antiquity and persisted into Joseph Smith’s cultural milieu.
Among Mesoamerican and southwestern indigenous groups, diviners often gazed into water filled bowls to access the spiritual realms. And similar techniques were used across various nations, including ancient Egypt.
The earliest and most enduring form of scrying involved observing the surface of still water in natural basins, such as ponds or lakes. However, because of the practical limitations of accessing water, more portable alternatives, scrying mirrors, emerged.
These devices, dating back to 6200 BC, were also utilized by the Sumerians, Egyptians, Olmecs, Mayan, Greeks, Chinese, and others. In Mesoamerica, divining mirrors were not only widespread but ritually significant.
At many classic Mayan sites, mirrors were often placed in bowls to mimic luminous water pools. These reflective devices were believed to reveal past and future events, and served as tools of spiritual visions for shamans. In Mesoamerican practice, shiners were viewed from a distance, often propped on stands or held by attendants. Shamans would gaze into these reflective devices at arm’s length. Again, not wearing the spectacles on the eyes.
Mesoamerican mirrors were typically crafted from pyrite or obsidian mosaics set in circular wooden frames, sometimes reinforced with copper, gold or tumbaga. And if you’re familiar with that, that’s what some scholars theorize the Book of Mormon plates might have been made out of, or something similar to that.
Beyond mirrors, mesoamericans revered a broader category of reflective media, in what one scholar describes as the reflective surface complex. In this worldview, many luminous surfaces symbolized the liminal threshold between the natural and supernatural realms.
The Latin root limen informs the term liminal, meaning threshold and denotes a space that straddles ordinary perception and sacred revelation. A liminal portal would then refer to a bridge or gateway that straddles the world of mortality, as well as the supernatural. In the Maya worldview, the mirror represented an archetype or broader domain of shiny surfaces that had the potential to access the liminal or supernatural worlds.
Mirror words for modern and conquest period Mayan dialects, for instance, are rooted in expressions such as lightning, glean and shine. One translation for mirror glyphs at a Mayan archeological site is shiner.
It refers to something shiny, resplendent. Modern Native American shamans also refer to the divinatory mirrors with the word that means “things that shine”, a word that includes crystal, water and glass, as well as various types of shiny stone such as jade, obsidian, and crystal.
We recall that those stones prepared by the brother of Jared were touched by God to shine forth in the darkness in the barges when they were building the barges to cross the ocean.
“Accounts from early Latter-day Saint figures describe the interpreter stones as transparent, reflective, or luminous–”glass,” “diamond,” crystal,” “white,” “clear,” or “polished marble with a brief few gray streaks.” Some, like David Whitmer, said the stones were “opaque except to Joseph’s prophetic vision.” In another interview, he called them “whitish.” Lucy Mack Smith described them as “three-cornered diamonds set in glass,” likely based on a tactile memory rather than direct observation.
Despite inconsistencies, a consensus emerges: the stones were probably smooth, excluding Lucy Mack Smith’s statement, were probably smooth, shiny and semi opaque to transparent. Their sacred character likely stemmed from both their appearance and function. While I suspect the stones were roundish and smooth, and that Lucy was misremembering what she felt, (she didn’t see the stones) it’s possible that, per Lucy’s description, the stones were triangular shaped, or they were topped with triangular shapes, or that they had facets.
Potential candidates for the Nephite interpreters include jade, obsidian and quartz crystal, and they fit these descriptions. They were often rare, sacred, or imported in Mesoamerican trade, further elevating the ritual value. Things that were brought in from the outside were seen to have not only more value, but maybe more sacred value. They were exotic and had otherworldly characteristics to them.
So let’s start with jade. Jadeite, a rare mineral that’s only found in perhaps eight locations in the world, including Guatemala, which is right in the proposed Book of Mormon setting for the Mesoamerican, model, and it was deeply symbolic in Mesoamerica. The Maya, for instance, associated jade with water, divination, and sacred value. Their glyph for water was a jade bead. Though often green, jade can also be blue, white, or grayish, and when polished it gains translucency and glass-like luster. For the Maya, translucent jade mirrored the depths of still water, evoking introspective and spiritual reflection. Jade was frequently associated with shiners and divination, and jade was often found alongside mirrors and burials.
Some pieces of jade were prized for their divinatory powers. Thus jade spheres found in one ancient Mayan temple was immediately identified as the divinatory sastun. The word sastun comes from sas, meaning light or mirror, and tun, meaning stone. So, a light stone or mirror stone. Mayan shamans use them as divination tools.
Jade was often used during ceremonies held to commemorate deified ancestors, and in the ritual conjuring of supernatural forces and gods. Identified at times as “the breath of life,” jade was used to form ornaments, and in ritual ceremonies, and often played a crucial role in mediating between humans, gods, and ancestors att the Mesoamerican axis mundi.
The axis mundi, and this is something we find pretty much throughout the world, is basically a point where heaven and earth come together, is often symbolized by a tree that goes down to the underworld of the dead, and then up to the, world, the living, then up to the sky, that ties in the heavens. So this was seen as a possible axis mundi. In other words, connecting heaven and earth with mortals and the deceased and everything else. This has some interesting temple symbolism going on.
Artistic depictions show serpents, symbols of wind and breath, emerging from jade ear spools, emphasizing the idea of conjured spirit through speech breath. Speech and breath are closely related phenomena in Mesoamerican thought, and denote the conjuring of supernatural beings and ancestors. In classic Mayan rituals of conjuring, gods and ancestors were symbolically exhaled and conjured from pairs of massive ear spools placed at the end of ceremonial bars. Sometimes easier spools were worn on other parts of the body, such the chest or abdomen.
Now I should note that there have not been any of these found where jade is encompassed in metal, separated by a ceremonial bar. But there’s a symbolism that’s going on here, which we’ll talk about later on that could tie in to that earlier depiction that I propose of what the interpreters might have looked like.
So let’s skip to obsidian and obsidian-like. Another likely material was also widely revered and traded across Mesoamerica. Like jade, it was fashioned into jewelry and religious objects, including mirrors composed of dark obsidian shards mounted to wooden bases. Obsidian was also sometimes mounted into ear spools. Though typically black or brown, obsidian can appear red, gray, or even translucent, depending on its source.
The obsidian in one deposit in El Salvador, again, Book of Mormon lands and geography that I accept, is translucent or transparent. Colorless or near colorless obsidian has been found in deposits in Peru, New Mexico, and Mexico.It’s possible the interpreters were made of clear, translucent obsidian.
Then lastly, you have quartz crystal. It’s another strong candidate. Their dazzling characteristics have long attracted ritual use across cultures.
Given the association between water and divination, it’s notable that the word crystal derives from the Greek term for frozen water or ice. Crystals have served as tools for scrying and spirit contact, and are found in Mesoamerican archeological contexts. Modern Maya shamans still use them, referring them to saqabaj, which are basically white or clear stones.
Although Lucy Mack Smith described the interpreters as three cornered diamonds, she likely never saw them directly and was recalling their shape from memory many years later. Crystals are typically transparent or translucent, and possess naturally occurring hexagonal geometries, not three sided, but hexagonal. But if Lucy’s description was accurate, the stones could have been cut into angular forms for symbolic purposes.
In Maya cosmology, a three cornered jade stone is associated with a primordial maize spirit, an element of creation mythology. While such a connection might be fanciful, it is not unreasonable to assume that if Lucy was correct about the interpreter stones being three cornered, they might have been intentionally cut in a shape to symbolize a larger Mesoamerican construct.
One of the possibly unique aspects of the Nephite interpreters is that the device consists of two shiners, which is part of the reason they resemble spectacles. Well, there were two stones in the Nephite spectacles. Joseph disassembled them and put one in a darkened hat, as he would with his treasure digging stone. So while Joseph and his contemporaries originally contextualized interpreters for spectacles because they looked somewhat like them, Joseph eventually recontextualized them to fit his treasure digging seer stones which were not utilized like spectacles.
It is typically assumed that Mesoamerican shamans used a single mirror or shiner during the rituals. However, this is not something we can say definitively because the archeology can’t tell us if more than one shiner was used. Iconographic evidence often shows figures with multiple shiners. Many ancient Mayan stelae, for example, depict figures who are wearing or otherwise associated with two or more mirror glyph-like elements. As noted earlier, you have the jade ear spools connected by a ceremonial bar.
The theme of complementary opposites is common in Mesoamerican mythology.
Examples in archeology and ethnographic record, myths of twins and sibling pairs are common. Although represented as twins or siblings, they are almost always utilized in iconography and mythology to represent connected opposites. The idea of contrasting duality, where the two halves of each pairing are independent and yet connected to one another, is vital to the Mesoamerican way of thinking. Twin or sibling figures in Mesoamerican mythology symbolize opposing but complementary forces.
Mirrors associated with deities reflect this opposition.
The jester god linked to kingship was often symbolized by a light mirror, possibly pyrite, while God K, tied to lineage, was represented by a dark mirror. So we had a light and dark mirror–the opposites–possibly obsidian.
Similarly, the paddler God, its varying entities, personify the sun’s journey through day and night. Glyphs like nin, the brightness of the day, the sun, which is the light shiner, and akbal, the brightness of the sun, and is the dark shiner, reinforce this symbolic binary. So we see that in these twins and these gods, there’s this binary source of light and dark going on there. We’re going to come back to that.
Let’s talk for a minute about the breastplate. Mesoamerican shiners were both portable and wearable. Mirrors often had holes to allow suspension from the neck, chest, back or head. Artistic depictions show shiners incorporated into headdresses. Breastplates were worn on the abdomen. Those worn on the forehead likely signified divine authority or kingship, while those on the torso symbolized the womb-like center of the cosmos, and they’re often symbolized by caves–another note we’re going to come back to.
Given this, the Nephite interpreters were likely not intended as facial wear, like spectacles, but as part of a sacred dress mounted on the head, chest, or abdomen. This possibility is reinforced by reports that the interpreters were attached to a breastplate.
Early Latter-day Saints sources, including William Smith, claimed that interpreters were affixed to a rod which attached to a breastplate worn over the heart. The pocket configuration allowed the device to be stored and used in a specific ritual posture. Such design parallels Mesoamerican depictions of breastplates, often adorned with reflective elements and may draw upon Old World parallels, like the Israelite High priest breastplate, which held the Urim and Thummim near the heart for revelatory purposes.
Breastplates were widespread in ancient Mesoamerica, crafted from various materials, including jade, turtle shell, and gold. Shiners were often worn on the chest or abdomen, and in Maya iconography, frequently depict reflective breastplate devices.
Scholars categorize Mayan iconography by various named elements as a method to help translate the meaning of the symbols.
The meaning for the element that means mirror and shiner was the same and was explicitly linked to a breastplate device in the artwork of one Maya lord. Likewise, the fact that Moroni included the breastplate with the interpreter stones suggests some meaningful connection between the Nephite shiners and the breastplate.
In ancient Israelite practice, the Urim and Thummim were worn over the heart and housed in a pouch beneath a high priest breastplate. This was more than a practical placement. It symbolized revelation penetrating the heart, the seed of divine understanding. Revelation was sought only when the device was worn near the heart. Mesoamerican shamans also wore pictorial shiners suspended by the neck and were attached to a larger breastplate.
Lucy Mack Smith described the Nephite breastplate as extending from the neck to the stomach, consistent with Mesoamerican tunic adornments. Thus, the interpreter stones, jade, obsidian, or crystal may have been part of an elaborate pictorial assembly designed for revelatory ritual.
Ancient Mesoamericans typically associated caves with ports that would bridge the space between humans and the divine. Almost like we find in modern temples. These openings into the Earth supposedly served as gateways to the Earth’s womb or navel, and the world of the dead or divine. Here, shamans could open a portal to the underworld, linking the living community simultaneously with the ancestors and with the earth.
This is an important topic I talk a lot about in my book, Rethinking Revelation: us being linked backwards in time to the covenant people and forwards in time as well.
Because caves were understood to be a gateway to the other world, it’s not surprising to see caves linked with shiners or mirrors. By representing a world that can be looked through but not passed through, mirrors and shiners were often understood as caves or passageways for the supernatural.
The brother of Jared’s vision on Mount Shelem, where the Lord touched lumen stones and the veil was lifted, resonates with Mesoamerican concepts of sacred space, liminality, and divine contact through shining media. The similarities between the sacred space shiners and a portal through which the dark past finds a familiar home in general Mesoamerican religious concepts.
Although the Brother of Jared’s narrative was rooted in the Old World, I believe the account was reinterpreted within a Nephite Mesoamerican framework, by subsequent Nephite generations. So what I argue, and again, I do this in my book Rethinking Revelation mostly, is that by the time the Book of Mormon was written, things had changed. We’ve gone through thousands of years of Mesoamerican life.
So I think that they were describing the world that they knew. And of course, we read into it (and I think Joseph Smith read into it when he translated it) more of a biblical setting than maybe it would have come out if a scholar had done. It would have been the same story, but it might have a different flavor.
It is noteworthy that multiple second hand accounts claim Joseph Smith returned the plates to a cave in the Hill Cumorah, where he and Oliver reportedly saw piles of metal records and precious stones. Whether literary or visionary, the cave, as an archive, reflects ancient ritual sensibilities.
Mesoamerican iconography often links scribes to the number tree, a cosmological symbol that represented the amate tree, which was the source of paper bark codices where they got the book.
The Itzamna, which is God D, was a Mayan scribal deity, and he’s portrayed with its glyph and associated with the mirror symbols for light and dark. So we have a Mayan god who’s a scribe, making books, that’s tied to some sort of mirror that’s light and dark. Again, this dualistic or complementary opposition. Mayan scribes held prestigious titles, including Ah ts’ib, which means artist wise or keeper of the Holy book. As a detail in Rethinking Revelation, sacred texts were frequently transmitted orally. Performers memorized elaborate narratives using repetition and parallelism.
Mesoamerican art depicts speech scrolls emerging from the mouths of speakers, often shown alongside shiners. These visual pairings suggest shiner served as medium for divine communication, bridging human and other world voices.
We recall that the Book of Mormon was dictated orally from Joseph to Oliver, while Joseph looked into the shiner.
Some studies suggest fascinating relationships between Maya would-be-kings, scribes, caves, and shiners. Mayan scribes’ workshops were imagined as caves, a place of creation and transformation. And of course the cave is symbolic of, again, the entry in the other world. Well, it’s interesting that Ether was writing in the “cavity of a rock,” which maybe ties to this archetype.
Maya scribes who recorded the history of the rulers of people were often shamans who utilized ritual shiners. They functioned as priests, historians, and artists, and occasionally rose to kingship. Nephi and Mosiah I similarly embody both prophetic and royal authority, linking scribe and spiritual roles.
Maya rulers were seen as divinely sanctioned intermediaries who possessed ritual artifacts, often reflective, and validating their power. As I argue in my book Rethinking Revelation and in volume two of my Book of Mormon series, Will the real Book of Mormon Author Please Stand Up, King Mosiah I was likely the first Nephite king to acquire the brother of Jared’s interpreter stones. Or at least as I argue, and I won’t go into this, there may be a Mesoamerican likening of those archetypal stones. The acquisition of shiners likely symbolized divine approval and validated his authoritative position as king.
Scribes not only transmitted myth, but often restructured narratives during cultural crises in order to reinforce social cohesion and political legitimacy. As creators of a collective memory, they acted as sacred mediators. Scribes were often not only mediums for other world powers, but could help codify and validate elite lineages during a time of cultural chaos.
So let’s talk about the light and dark here again. Mesoamerican glyphs often depict mirrors as symbols of complementary opposites, bright and dark, night and day. And this is identified in the paddler gods and in many other areas of Mesoamerican symbology.
This binary symbol aligns intriguingly with the Israelite Urim and Thummim, which scholars traditionally translate as “light and perfection.”
The term Urim derives from the Hebrew root meaning light, fire, illumination. Some traditions hold that the Urim glowed in response to divine affirmation. Similarly, Mesoamerican shiners were linked to fire and spiritual insight, serving as metaphorical flames through which divine answers emerged.
Thummim is a more enigmatic word. While often translated as perfection or completeness, linguistic analysts suggest that the root tmm is associated with sealed, obscured, veiled, or dark. While we typically think of darkness as lacking enough illumination to see clearly, darkness could refer to the opaqueness of a stone or its inability to allow light transmission.
Some related stems likewise signified “to be clogged up,” “to extract,” or “to make opaque.” The stem frequently suggests an action that prevents, blocks, obstructs, or even hides something, such as an opaqueness which prevents access to a vision.
It’s interesting, therefore, to note that the Hebrew word contained the Hebrew stem
tmm includes verbs that translate as “sealed up” or “impede access,” particularly to maintain purity or sacredness. In this light, Thummim might indicate not just perfection, but a protective concealment–an intentional opaqueness or barrier to unauthorized vision.
Sealed things, as explained in one of my other papers, are secured away not only from unauthorized inspection, but to ensure their purity and integrity. The Nephite interpreters were given to Joseph so he could unseal the record.
Without the interpreters or a seer stone, the translation plates would have remained hidden or obstructed from unauthorized viewing.
Given the opposing meaning of Urim and Thummim, several scholars argue that the term referred to a set of contrasting divinatory stones, possibly black and white, and which produce binary responses, like yes or no. These stones functioned as ancient lots. So you had a desirable stone, undesirable stone.
In gemological terms, a stone’s light transmission is categorized by whether it’s transparent, translucent, or opaque, and variations between. Jadeite and obsidian, for instance, are generally translucent, while quartz crystal tends to be more transparent. Transparent stones such as diamonds, quartz, gems, and corundum (like ruby and sapphire) might be nearly as clear as glass, depending on the stone’s thickness, imperfections, inclusions, color.
Translucent stones like jadeite, obsidian, agate, allow light transmission, but not visibly clear, like glass. Opaque stones obscure light transmission because they don’t have the right properties to allow as much transmission through.
Some scholars argue that one of the 12 stones in the Hebrew Urim and Thummim was known as soham, a word possibly derived from a word that means “darker, cloudy,” and could indicate whether the stone was clear or cloudy.
And as noted, more than one scholar also suggested the Hebrew tmm is a root that means to be shut up or sealed. So it could refer to a stone’s light transmission. Doesn’t necessarily mean it’s black and white.
Descriptions of the interpreter stones varied among early witnesses, likely because of the differences in lighting, circumstance, and individual perception. A stones’ brilliance, its shine, depends on both transmitted and reflected light; meaning the stone might appear more or less transparent, translucent or opaque, depending on its context. This could explain why some described the interpreters as clear, light or white–which white could actually mean dark in this sense, because white would be opaque. It wouldn’t let light transmission through. It’s dark, it’s sealing up the light.
The Jaredite stones were described as white and clear, a phrasing that appears at odds with light and dark. Yet both refer to levels of translucency. Usually, we will not refer to white stone as dark, but a white stone would be dark if it lacked translucency. Our English opaque, for instance, comes from the Latin opacus, which means dark, obscure, or impervious to the rays of light. Symbolically, and even descriptively, in terms of light transmission, clear and white stones could be called light and dark stones. The slight visual difference, which might only be fully perceivable in the right light, may not have been nuanced enough to warrant a different description upon cursory inspection.
It’s also possible the interpreter stones were distinctly different gems. Maybe one was near translucent jadeite and the other was nearly transparent quartz crystal. While some witnesses to the interpreter stones may have seen them with more or less shine than others, the difference between stone one and two might actually mean difference in translucency. The difference may not have been immediately noticeable under superficial examination, and so maybe they weren’t compelled to describe a mismatch.
Some Mesoamerican shiners were intentionally made from iridescent materials that appear dark and light at once. This duality resonates with early Jewish traditions, where the Urim and Thummim changed appearance in response to divine questions; shining brightly for affirmation or dulling when negative.
A stone’s luster, the degree of surface reflectivity, also affects how it is perceived. The luster indicates how shiny a brilliant stone is. A stone’s luster can also affect the perception of transparency. So the top four gemstones that have luster, with adamantine, pearl, they have a breakdown in different jewelry grades. And of course, none of this would have been known, probably to Joseph Smith. But all of these types of luster would have fit the three stones that I’m talking about.
Perhaps the translation of Urim and Thummim as “white and black” or “illuminating dark” meant something else, perhaps something symbolic. This has been suggested for Mesoamerican mirrors as well.
The Mayan paddler gods, for instance, were associated with the symbol. It’s light, dark as well as sunrise, sunset; sunrise begins the day and sunset begins the night.
So likewise Urim refers to light, fire, illumination, perhaps the bright shiners of ancient Mesoamerica, while some of them appear to be associated with darkness, like dark shiners. It’s possible, therefore, that Urim might signify beginning, morning sunrise, where Thummim, night or perfection, finishing the cycle. Evidence suggests that the Urim and Thummim represented two sets of complementary objects, or elements that were light and dark. And like I said, perfection.
It’s worth remembering, though, that Jesus, the most perfect being referred to himself as the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and end, so we can have that completion from one to the other.
Some scholars claim that the Chinese yin–yang is similar to the Urim and Thummim, and that the Israelite divining rods represented light and dark. And some arguments dispute that, but nevertheless, we see some interesting similarities there.
Okay, let’s talk about one more aspect, and that’s sacred bundles. In Mesoamerican cultures, sacred artifacts were often bundled or wrapped in cloth or bark and bound with knotted cords, symbolically representing states of potentiality such as a child within a womb. This bundling imbued items with sanctity, transforming them from ordinary objects into vessels of divine presence. So it was the bundling act that made them sacred. And what do you do when something’s bundled? You’re sealing it up.
The D-shaped rings around the Nephite plates may mirror these symbolic cords. Securing sacred knowledge within classic Mayan art depicts bundles of wrap cloth, but sometimes include chests, or wooden boxes, covered in textiles.
The Book of Mormon, similarly enclosed in a buried stone box, echoed this motif. Though a stone box and a cave differ, both reflect a Mesoamerican tradition of interring sacred relics underground, and in the Mixtec practice of storing royal bundles in caves believed to be portals to the divine.
When we recall the possibility that the Nephite interpreters were constructed of jade, it’s interesting to note the following: In Mayan, ikatz, which often translates as “cargo bundle” or” burden,” it is often denoted by iconography that depicts cloth bundles that hold jade tributes. In fact, Kerry Hull, LDS archeologist, Mesoamerican specialist, suggests that ikatz bundles are linked directly to jade holders.
Another account refers to the contents of sacred bundles that contain the heart of God the Father, a bead of precious stone. Sometimes the bundles are described as wrapped fireness of heat or bundles of flames. An interesting description, since both the Israelite Urim and Thummim and Mesoamerican mirrors were sometimes equated with fire.
Then we cannot overlook the possible parallel to the Old Testament Ark of the Covenant. We don’t know if the Nephite prophets were familiar with the Israelite ark, it’s not mentioned in the Book of Mormon, however, it seems logical that Lehi might have known about this when they fled Jerusalem. If Lehi was familiar with their Ark, and if he passed that knowledge on to his progeny, subsequent Nephite prophets might have recontextualized the ark according to the binding rituals of Mesoamerican culture.
One Spanish writer, Fray Diego Duran, of the 16th century wrote of three important books of the history religion calendar of the pre-Hispanic Aztecs, describing a cloth covered wooden coffer that contains some small items. Duran characterized the sacred bundle as very much like the Ark of the Covenant.
So likewise, one 20th Century scholar describes a Popol Vuh bundle of flames as sort of a cloth covered ark with mysterious contents. To the Nephites, the ark might have served as a bundle to encase the Word of God as written on the stone tablets.
Don Bradley convincingly argues that the Nephites, as the New Israelites, possessed their own ark, which housed the parallel relics to the biblical heirlooms, such as the Liahona, the Jaredite breastplate, the interpreters, the sword of Laban.
So there were other things included in this bundle of various things. Weapons were sometimes associated with this bundle. It depicts sacrificial axes. And sometimes they were symbolic, but real axes have been found in some of the bundles. And, they’re often a symbol of authority and power and connected to deity.
In at least a few instances, the axes are tied to decapitation rituals, which brings back memories. So we’ve got the sword of Laban with a decapitation that’s maybe connected to Moroni’s bundle.
It’s also important to understand that the Maya often viewed their leaders as gods or demigods. Bundling, explains two scholars, extended to the mortuary practices and were conceptually linked to themes of lineage, continuity, and ancestor worship.
Many members have probably wondered why Moroni included the breastplate in the stone box. As far as we know, Joseph never used the breastplate, even though he might have thought it worked somehow like the Urim and Thummim breastplate of Israelite priests. But I suggest there’s more going on there. Sacred bundles often contain the ritual attire of gods and divine kings, garments and regalia worn by shamans impersonating deities during ceremonies. Since kings and shamans often impersonate deities and sacred rituals, deity bundles contained costumes and adornments which could be worn by the mortals who perform the sacred rituals.
In early Mesoamerican cultural practice, wearing the proper attire was seen as requisite to opening the supernatural portal. Ritual dress was essential for accessing the divine. In this light, the Nephite breastplate is part of the ritual attire. So it is with the shiners. It was more than symbolic, it was required to open the portal, a sacred axis mundi connecting the prophets to God.
I believe that Moroni included the breastplate in the stone box. Because in his worldview the article of clothing was a necessary element in the bundle’s contents. In Nephite Mesoamerican thought, a proper ritual attire might have been required by any future prophet. So he included it in there because he thought he’d probably need it.
I’m going to quickly jump on one other thing that I think is important here, and that’s breaking the seal. Closing up the bundle seal was a ritual experience for the Mayan; opening was ritual to the Mayan as well. In fact, they would sometimes wrap stelae that were engraved with things to keep them holy, to make them sacred. That’s why they sealed it up. He was to identify and ratify this as important property. They were tied to lineage.
And, of course, you know, Laman and Lemuel were outraged when Nephi had possession of the brass plates and stuff from the lineage.
The sacred bundles tend to be open in states of transition. So very important things that were going on in the world. The bundles were understood to protect the sacred. And while the unwrapping ceremony was often calculated to denote political or religious control, in ancient Mesoamerica they were not at liberty to unwrap the bundle any time they wanted. The ritualized opening of bundles was a major ritual event that offered the only possible access to the bundle’s contents.
Mesoamerican art depicted the opening of some of these bundles.
And this is showing other bundles throughout the world. I mean, why do they put scrolls in jars and so forth?
That the bundles appeared to explode when opened up, that’s how important this was. It was like, life changing.
Mesoamerican bundles served as portable axis mundi. They existed between the realm of the Otherworld and the modern world, connecting the worlds together.
There’s again, maybe some examples of the bundles. We have the wrapping of the metal around the interpreter stones that would have served as a bundle as well. So it falls into theme with that.
But there’s some of the comparisons between the shiners and the interpreters. A couple of pages on that.
Joseph Smith’s Reception of the Plates
And then just lastly, Joseph Smith’s reception of the plates from Moroni. A celestial ancestor follows this tradition. Moroni, a founding patriarch of the Nephites civilization, becomes the transmitter of divine knowledge to modern Israel. Through divinely appointed means, Joseph broke the seal, unbundled the sacred artifacts, and opened a revelatory portal. This act restored the lost narratives and reconnected scattered remnants of God’s covenant people.
D&C 84 talks about how the early Latter-day Saints were under condemnation of not taking the covenant seriously. And that’s exactly what happened with the Book of Mormon, it was breaking that seal.
God’s people share a sanctified narrative that binds them to each other and God. The translation of the Book of Mormon richly opened, sanctified, and shared that divine narrative. Modern members of God’s covenant people are given the opportunity to ritually remember the divine covenant narrative by reading, studying, and internalizing the Book of Mormon. The book, in turn, has the power to change the receiver’s heart to align with Christ. I say this in Jesus’ name, Amen.
Book of Mormon interpreters; Urim and Thummim; Nephite spectacles; Joseph Smith seer stone; rock in a hat; Book of Mormon translation; Martin Harris description; Lucy Mack Smith account; Mesoamerican shiners; ritual mirrors; scrying traditions; jade divination; obsidian mirrors; quartz crystal; Maya cosmology; light and dark symbolism; Israelite high priest breastplate; sacred bundles; sealed records; gold plates; D-shaped rings; cave symbolism; axis mundi; Mesoamerican geography model; Restoration scripture; Book of Mormon; LDS temple ordinances; CES Letter; are Mormons Christian
In his October 2025 General Conference address, “Do Your Part with All Your Heart,” Dieter F. Uchtdorf teaches that discipleship is neither accidental nor passive. It is a deliberate and sustained effort to follow Jesus Christ patiently, consistently, and with commitment.
He reminds us that faith does not remain strong by default. Like any skill or discipline, it must be practiced and nourished over time. [Read more…] about Do Your Part with All Your Heart
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWA2M-DrS2s
The ABCs of The Book of Abraham . . . or, The Book of Abraham for Dummies
Mike Ash and Kevin Barney
August 2004
Ash and Barney offer an “issues matrix” to organize the debate over confusing aspects of the Book of Abraham. They then sketch how the papyri likely traveled from early 19th-century excavations and collectors to Joseph Smith in 1835, what happened to the collection afterward, and point readers to key resources on both critical and faithful sides of the question of its origin.
Of the uniquely LDS scriptures, it seems that the Book of Abraham is one of the more difficult ones for lay members to get a scholarly hold of. And so today we’re going to be dealing with the issues involving the Book of Abraham. What’s it all about?
Why is it so tough? What makes it difficult for lay members to grasp or get their hands on the scholarly material?
Well, there are several reasons.
Now the Book of Abraham is something that of course involves Egyptology. And Egyptology is fun and exciting! So the study of the Book of Abraham should be fun and exciting as well.
And we’re hoping that we can make this fun and exciting for everybody—to learn a little bit about what’s going on.
Now, a couple of things to keep in mind.
Because there are challenging issues—and it’s going to maybe conflict with some of the traditions that we’ve been taught—
Now, we’re not going to try to advance the ball today.
Rather, we’re going to try to kind of lay out what the issues are.
We’re going to survey the field—and perhaps point to some existing literature so that you can get in the game if you like.
When I was in law school (I’m a lawyer) and:
And so, quickly what you learn to do is you learn to outline.
You can even go to a bookstore and buy commercially prepared outlines of contracts or torts or whatever.
So, what we want to start with is an “issues matrix.”
We don’t have a lot of time to do a detailed outline—but a fairly simple outline of the categories of issues that come up in Book of Abraham polemics.
This way you’ll be able to see the big picture a little bit—and you’ll also kind of have an organized set of pigeon holes so as you learn new information you’ll have a slot to put that in.
And so if you have that kind of framework in your mind, you’ll be able to grasp things much better.
So everything we talk about is going to fit into one of these categories.
And the way I see it, there are four large categories—and I’m going to break each of those down into two or three sub-categories.
The first large category I want to talk about—or just identify (we’re not going to talk about these in detail)—is historical issues.
And here there are three sub-categories.
The second large category of issues is the Joseph Smith Papyri—and I divide this up into three sub-categories.
The first is the three facsimiles—which are the papyri that were published together with the Book of Abraham initially in 1842 in the Times & Seasons; as we’ll describe in more detail later.
Now there are three of these facsimiles.
Facsimile 1 we often refer to as a “lion couch scene” because this bier or altar or whatever it is the figure is lying on is—as you can see—in the shape of a lion.
Facsimile 2, in the literature, is referred to as a “hypocephalus.”
And if you’re going to get involved in Book of Abraham studies, you need to become familiar with that word.
It was coined by Champollion, based on a Greek expression hypo ton kephalon which means “under the head.”
This was a circular disk that was placed under the head of the mummy to provide heat to the deceased in the afterlife.
And Facsimile 3 is often referred to as a “throne scene.”
And I’m using neutral terms for these that everyone can agree on—because everyone agrees that figure is sitting on a throne.
When we talk about the facsimiles, there are typically two types of issues that come up.
The first is, to what extent were the restorations of the facsimiles for publication correct?
And then the second (which didn’t make it onto the slide) is, to what extent were the explanations of numbered figures in the facsimiles that are printed with them— to what extent are those correct?
And these issues raise all sorts of issues about who gets to sit as judge and jury on that question. Who gets to decide? What standards are we going to apply? And so forth.
(2) Now under the Joseph Smith Papyri, the second category, are what I call the extant papyri.
“Extant” is a scholar’s term for that which is known to be physically existing in the world today.
And there are 11 papyrus fragments from Joseph Smith’s collection that we do have—and they still exist—you can take a short drive to the north to the LDS Archives and that’s where they are.
And again, I’m going to kind of divide this up into three categories:
First is JSP I, and you may recognize this as the source from which Facsimile 1 was derived—you can see the lion couch scene again.
Second are JSP X and XI, and this is often referred to as the “Sensen” text.
Sensen is again one of those words you have to get used to in Book of Abraham studies. It’s the Egyptian word for breathing—and this is what’s called a Book of Breathings.
A Book of Breathings is kind of a late-summary—it has an analogous purpose to the Book of the Dead.
It’s instructions to help people negotiate the afterlife.
Now, the JSP I matches up with JSP XI and then number X, and then there are columns missing, and then the original of Facsimile 3 would have been on that same scroll.
So that’s how those texts would have lined up originally.
Lastly in the Joseph Smith Papyri, under the extant fragments of papyrus, are fragments from two different copies of the Egyptian Book of the Dead.
So these are the remaining fragments from the Joseph Smith collection of Egyptian papyri.
(3) The third sub-category is the non-extant papyri—so in other words we have 11 pieces that physically exist, but those 11 are a minority of the original collection.
What Joseph originally had was more—substantially more—than those pieces.
So what can we decide, or learn, or infer, about the not extant pieces from those which are extant and the published facsimiles and a couple of historical allusions?
The third large category of issues is the Kirtland Egyptian Papers.
This is a collection of documents which is extant. Again, it’s in the LDS Church Archives and dates to the Kirtland period of Church history.
And these documents are there without context—so they’re without explanation as to what they are.
They have something to do with the Book of Abraham but we have to infer from the documents themselves, you know, what they are, who created them, when, and for what purpose.
And these are very controversial questions.
We typically divide these documents into two types or categories.
(1) First, are Egyptian alphabet and grammar manuscripts, which are manuscripts which purport to, or attempt to decipher Egyptian language.
(2) And then secondly, there are Book of Abraham manuscripts.
There are three or four of these, and they have text from the first two chapters of the Book of Abraham, written out in flowing longhand.
And then in the left-hand margin there are symbols—Egyptian symbols—which derive from JSP XI.
The fourth and final category I’m going to mention is the English text of the Book of Abraham, and this tends to get short shrift in the discussion.
Polemicists don’t want to talk about the actual Book of Abraham—they want to talk about all the Egyptian stuff. This is actually an important area that needs more attention rather than less.
And there are typically two ways to go at it.
One is to look and see whether there are indirect indications of antiquity in the English text.
And then, conversely, are there historical anachronisms—and if so, how do we deal with those?
And that is our Book of Abraham issues matrix.
Now we’re going to turn to the history of the papyri.
Our story starts in Egypt in the city of Thebes, which is modern-day Luxor.
In 1798, Napoleon invaded Egypt.
And accompanying Napoleon were several scholars and scientists that began exploring the antiquities of Egypt.
And these scholars and scientists were more like gravediggers or grave robbers, I guess, is how we’d view them today—almost like the Indiana Jones type—and they began looking for all these ancient artifacts that they could find.
Napoleon hired, or had brought in, several people, one of which was Bernardino Drovetti.
And he was the former consul general of France in Egypt.
And he had many people in his employ that would search for these Egyptian artifacts.
One of the many men that was hired by Drovetti was Giovanni Pietro Antonio Lebolo.
And he was an Italian who was once enrolled in Napoleon’s service.
Now it’s possible that Lebolo’s family knew Drovetti’s family since they grew up in Italy in the same city. 
Lebolo spent the years of 1817 through 1822 in Egypt excavating artifacts.
He may have been in charge of anywhere from two to 400 different diggers—and may have discovered several hundreds of mummies while working for Drovetti.
Much of Lebolo’s digging would have taken place in the Valley of the Kings, or the Valley of the Nobles, and this is where King Tut was found.
So there were a lot of mummies in this area and sure enough, Lebolo found several mummies in tombs.
Now an interesting side note is the word mummy comes from the Arabic word mumiyah.
There is a black tarry substance found in the Middle East that they would call mumiyah.
And when the Arabs invaded Egypt, they found these mummies covered in black—which they thought was mumiyah, incorrectly—but nevertheless the term stuck.
And that’s where we get the word mummy from.
Now Ross T. Christensen, LDS scholar, speculated that Lebolo may have found the mummies in tomb 33—and that’s one possibility.
We know that H. Donl Peterson speculated that the mummies came from pit-tomb 32.
At pit-tomb 32 there’s a graffito with Lebolo’s name inscribed there, so we know that Lebolo was actually there—we don’t know for sure if the mummies came from there or from pit 33.
But we know Lebolo was there.
Where exactly the mummies were found is somewhat speculative.
So how did the mummies get from Egypt to Joseph Smith?
By 1822, Lebolo had returned to Europe, and on February 18th, 1830, he passed away at the age of 49.
The 11 mummies that he had were not initially catalogued in the inventory of his estate.
It was later discovered that Lebolo had given the mummies to Albano Oblasser to make arrangements to sell them.
Oblasser shipped them to New York in about March 1833, where they were purchased and picked up by one Michael Chandler—probably as an agent for interests in Philadelphia.
Now the History of the Church has an account where Chandler claims that he was Lebolo’s nephew and that Lebolo had willed him the artifacts, and it seems that that’s not true.
That’s perhaps a story that he made up about it.
Michael Chandler exhibited the mummy antiquities—which of course contained the papyri—in the Masonic Hall in Philadelphia from April through July 1833.
And we can trace these activities and know how he was displaying these from newspaper advertisements.
Over time he began to sell the mummies—first five, then two more—and soon he was down to four.
Chandler had heard through his travels of showing these mummies that Joseph had the ability to translate ancient documents, and when he was in Ohio, he came to see Joseph.
This was the end of June 1835.
Chandler stayed for about a week, and Joseph was interested in the papyri, but he wasn’t interested in the mummies.
Chandler said, “I’m not going to break up the set; you’ve got to buy them all together.”
Finally, a group of Latter-day Saints purchased the collection of mummies for about $2,400.
This was between July 5th and 9th in 1835.
Joseph announced at this time that the papyri contained the writings of Abraham and Joseph who was sold into Egypt.
Just so you know how we’ve kind of broken this up.
Mike is kind of dealing more with the historical side and I’m dealing more with the bibliographical side.
We’re giving little historical vignettes and little bibliographical vignettes.
It seemed like the most efficient way to introduce you to this area as a whole.
So what are some of the main books you can look at if you’re interested in this history and fleshing out what Mike just gave you in a nutshell?
When the papyri fragments were recovered by the Church in 1967 there was a flurry of interest and activity and a lot of this history was written then.
First there’s James Clark, The Story of The Pearl of Great Price.
As you can see this book was published before the papyri were formally recovered.
And so if you read material from this early period of Book of Abraham studies, you’ll often see, like Nibley and stuff, citing Clark.
So this is an important book in the intellectual history.
However subsequent events have really made it obsolete, so it’s not so important for us to read today unless you’re concerned about the intellectual history of the time.
Another book—this one does come out the year after the papyri fragments were recovered—From the Dust of Decades.
Frankly, this is not that important of a volume (just to be blunt about it).
The third volume I want to mention is by Jay Todd, a long-time managing editor of the Ensign who had a fascination with this topic and wrote a book called The Saga of the Book of Abraham, published by Deseret Book in 1969.
Out of all these, this is probably my favorite, and so I recommend it.
However you should be aware of two problems.
Number one, it’s long out of print, so if you want to get a copy, you’ve got to go into the Mormon secondary book market.
And as always, in that market you have to pay a premium.
I bought my copy a few years ago for like $45.00, and over time that price is going to inch up.
The second problem is it is dated.
There have been significant developments since this book came out, and so you must update Todd with Donl Peterson.
This book was published posthumously, shortly after his death.
But Peterson really advanced the ball in terms of our understanding of Lebolo and how the papyri came into Joseph’s hands, so you simply must read Peterson and update Todd with that book.
There are also a couple of articles.
Most of the guts of what Peterson came up with is in this article from BYU Studies.
(When the conference is over, we plan on putting this PowerPoint up on the website so don’t feel like you have to jot it all down now. There’s going to be a lot of bibliography. You’ll be able to get it at your leisure off the website.)
So, this is The Story of the Book of Abraham: Mummies, Manuscripts, and Mormonism (a little “m” alliteration there).
And then we have Peterson’s BYU Studies article.
And then there’s also a paper by John Gee at FARMS (Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies).
Gee eventually will write a full-length history that will supersede a lot of this material, but in the meantime you have to kind of get it in bits and pieces.
ASH:
Joseph recognized that there were some important things connected with these documents.
Obviously he was ready to start translating, and we find that in July 1835 he began translating these documents and a month later took a break from translating to visit the Saints in Michigan.
And in October of 1835 he resumed the study of the papyri.
We get this from his accounts in journals and in the History of the Church, other fragments of history that we have.
It’s at this point that he received revelation concerning Facsimile 2.
Then in November, the study of the papyri continued.
And it was in the Kirtland period that he also created the Kirtland Egyptian Papers which Kevin mentioned earlier—and will be brought up again.
The current text was finished—what we have now—by the end of July.
Now what we have for the Book of Abraham is probably only about one-fourth of what was produced.
We know that it took a lot longer, according to journalists, to read through the Book of Abraham than what it would take with what we have today.
So we know that they had much more that was translated than what we have.
And beyond that, the stuff that we don’t have in the Book of Abraham is lost.
We don’t know what happened to the rest of the translations that they had—it just doesn’t exist anymore, or we don’t have it anyhow.
It was first published in three issues in the Times & Seasons in Nauvoo beginning in March 1842, and then it was reprinted in the Millennial Star in England in 1842.
And then in 1851, it was re-published by Franklin Richards in his British tract The Pearl of Great Price, which is where we get the title, of course, for our portion that we have in the scriptures now.
And then Orson Pratt edited an American edition in 1878, and it was canonized in 1880.
So it took a number of years to go from the translation to canonization.
Now we’ve mentioned the Kirtland Egyptian Papers—I’m going to give you a little bibliography on that.
You should understand the Kirtland Egyptian Papers have been understudied so far, and this is probably the area where there’s going to have to be a lot more study in the future.
So if you want to get involved in Book of Abraham studies, this is an area that needs work.
The kind of classic article on this subject is by Hugh Nibley—long article, like 50 pages long—in BYU Studies.
It’s called “The Meaning of the Kirtland Egyptian Papers.”
So if you’re interested in this topic, I think you’ve got to start there.
Now this article by John Gee is not focused on the Kirtland Egyptian Papers, but it has a significant section devoted to it.
And there’s some updating of Nibley there that I think is important.
So I do think you need this chapter in one of the two volumes of the Richard L. Anderson festschrift—Brother Anderson being one of our speakers at this conference.
Now, those are articles about the Kirtland Egyptian Papers—what if you want to actually look at the things?
Well that’s kind of a problem. There really isn’t a good edition of them available.
One way you can look at them is to get a set from the Tanners from their bookstore.
A somewhat better way is you can order a set from Michael Marquardt who has the same microfilm edition as the Tanners, but on facing pages.
And he has transcriptions that make it a little bit easier to follow.
This however is not a good edition; the pictures come from microfilm and so they’re black and white, they’re scratchy, they’re hard to see.
And so, if you want to kind of look at them and get a sense for them, go ahead and buy this. But it’s not something that a scholar can really use very well.
Scholars of course will want access to the originals—or failing them, decent color photographs—and there are color photographs that scholars at FARMS have and other people have.
Brent Metcalfe, who was unable to be here today (he usually attends our conferences), he’s preparing a critical edition of the Kirtland Egyptian Papers that will have a color plate on the left-hand side and a greatly improved transcription on the right-hand side with textual notes.
I hope he will do this as a neutral tool that anyone can use, and that should be out in a year or two.
So if you want to wait for that, that will probably be a better edition than what we have now.
Well, I’m going to do a little history.
In the intellectual history of the debates on the Book of Abraham in the 20th century, the first significant event is the Spalding pamphlet.
In 1912, Franklin Spalding, who was the Episcopal Bishop of Utah—and by the way not to be confused with Solomon Spaulding whose name gave rise to the dominant theory of Book of Mormon origins among anti-Mormons in the 19th century—but anyway, Franklin Spalding published a little pamphlet called “Joseph Smith, Jr. As a Translator.”
And this pamphlet was actually an attack on the Book of Mormon, not specifically the Book of Abraham.
However, he tried to kind of bootstrap his argument by attacking the Book of Abraham.
The centerpiece of this pamphlet is he sent letters to eight Egyptologists—or they weren’t all Egyptologists, I would say Orientalists—giving them the facsimiles and Joseph’s explanations.
And he published the letters back from them—all saying, “Oh this is all wrong.”
And of course, five of the people he sent these letters to were his fellow Episcopalians.
In fact, looking back on it in hindsight, Spalding made a number of mistakes.
I mean he really had a good opportunity, and this was the right time to do this, and it was a good idea—but he could have executed it better in certain respects.
One thing I want to mention is he never would release the correspondence he used to solicit these letters from these scholars.
And it’s obvious from the letters he got back, he had poisoned the well.
We don’t know what he said, but he must’ve said, you know, “This is from Joseph Smith, and he’s a quack, so can you give me a letter to buttress that?”
If he had just done a blind solicitation he probably would’ve got pretty much the same letters back anyway—that wouldn’t have hurt him—but he just didn’t trust his position.
He probably should’ve trusted it, but he didn’t.
And so, this leads us to the bibliography on this episode.
If you want to read this pamphlet you can get a copy from the Tanners (so I’m advertising for the Tanners today!).
At the time there was a massive LDS response to this pamphlet and at least two dozen articles appeared.
Mostly they would appear in the newspaper but then they would be republished in the Improvement Era.
So if you want to read these, one way to do it is to go to the BYU Library and start at 1912 and go to about 1918 and just flip through the issues and you’ll find them—they’re all over the place.
For kind of a summary view of this there is a paper by Samuel Mercer at the time, kind of summarizing this from the critics’ perspective.
And again this is available from the Tanners.
I think they package the Spalding pamphlet with Samuel Mercer’s paper.
And then for a summary, from the point of view of the Saints, Hugh Nibley’s two year serial in the Improvement Era, beginning in January of 1968, is a review of the whole Spalding incident.
And towards the end of that serial he starts to get into Facsimile 1.
But most of this is a review of Spalding and it’s a lot of fun if nothing else.
It’s a very fun read so I highly encourage you to read that.
Again, you can find these in the old Eras themselves or there’s an edited set of this in the FARMS (2000) edition of Abraham in Egypt.
What happened to these documents, the papyri, after Joseph Smith had them?
Well he gave them to his mother, Lucy Mack Smith, and she used to show them at her house.
People would come by and pay her in order to see the mummies and the papyri and she would make a little bit of extra money doing this.
Of course, Joseph had passed away, and so she kept possession of these.
In 1856, they were passed on to Emma Smith, who had remarried at this time to Lewis Bidamon, and they took possession of it.
Within two weeks, Emma, Lewis and Joseph III signed a bill of sale transferring them to Abel Coombs.
Now it’s possible that this may have confirmed a prior transaction in which William Smith may have pawned the antiquities for living expenses.
We don’t really know the relationship between William’s supposed sale to this—so that’s a little bit unclear.
Coombs promptly sold a portion of the collection containing two mummies and some papyri—which very probably included Facsimile 3—to the St. Louis Museum.
For a good article on this you can read Walter Whipple’s “The St. Louis Museum and the Two Egyptian Mummies and Papyri” which was in BYU Studies.
The St. Louis Museum was sold and moved to Chicago in 1863 and then sold again to Col. Joseph Wood in January of 1864, who included the collection in the Wood’s Museum on Randolph Street.
The Wood collection burned in the great Chicago fire of 1871, and it was long assumed that all the papyri, the entire Joseph Smith collection, burned up in the fire as well.
In reality, a portion of the collection, which would later come into the possession of the Church, went to Coombs’ nurse, Charlotte Benecke Weaver Huntsman, after he died.
Charlotte’s daughter, Alice Coombs Weaver, later Heusser, brought the fragments to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 1918 for an evaluation, but the Museum did not purchase them at the time.
Ludlow Bull, associate curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, reached out to Alice to see about acquiring the papyri in 1946.
By that time Alice had died, but her widowed husband, Edward Heusser, who was now 80 years old, sold the pieces to the Museum for an undisclosed sum of money, together with the original bill of sale from Emma Smith.
Now because of the bill of sale, the Museum knew the connection with these papyri pieces to the Joseph Smith collection.
This was Emma Smith, the wife of Joseph Smith, and so they knew what they had there.
In the 1960s the Church was made aware of the existence of this collection, and negotiations to bring them back to the Church eventually were successful.
The transfer took place in 1967.
Now there’s a story of a University of Utah Coptic scholar, a well-known Coptic scholar by the name of Aziz Atiya, and supposedly, the story goes that he found them in a drawer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Most scholars think that there’re too many problems with that story—that this is probably not accurate.
Now there’re several unsolved mysteries still regarding the missing papyri and the mummies that were not sold to the St. Louis Museum.
Two mummies remain unaccounted for—we don’t know what happened to them.
There is some evidence that Charlotte had Facsimile 2 as late as 1918.
Stan Kimball, in a Dialogue article entitled “New Light on Old Egyptiana: Mormon Mummies 1848–71,” has a good article about this fact.
The recovery of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s pieces of the Joseph Smith Papyri and its aftermath is really the significant event in the basic history of the papyri, and it’s at this point that the intellectual history explodes. (Laughter)
Now who wrote the papyri and when was it written?
Those are questions, and there is some confusion among Latter-day Saints of what was happening.
There were five papyri in the Joseph Smith collection.
We have the scroll of Hor which contains Facsimiles 1 and 3 and the Sensen text.
That scroll of Hor is the most commonly analyzed portion of the Joseph Smith collection.
Hor was an Egyptian priest. He was the son of the great governor of Thebes.
And while some fragments of this text survived, much of the scroll was probably destroyed in the Chicago fire of 1871.
Then we have the scroll of Semminis, which contains several chapters of the Book of the Dead as well as some unidentified text.
Semminis was the daughter of a wealthy Egyptian and she was apparently of priestly lineage.
While several fragments of her scroll survived, much of it was also lost, presumably in the 1871 fire.
We have the scroll of Noufianoub, which contains a vignette, or summary, of one chapter of the Book of the Dead and several other unidentified texts.
Noufianoub was a wealthy Egyptian of Thebes, and the only place her name is attested is in JSP III.
Only one fragment of this survived and again the rest probably destroyed in the fire.
Then we have the scroll of Amenofis, which contains chapter 45 of the Book of the Dead and other unidentified text.
Amenofis was a son of Tanoub who was an Egyptian priest in Thebes.
No fragments of the scroll survived and it is presumed they were also destroyed in the fire.
Then we have the hypocephalus of Sheshonq which is the source for Facsimile 2.
The only thing we know about Sheshonq is that he was a wealthy member of an Egyptian priestly family.
And it’s uncertain whether this hypocephalus was destroyed in the fire—we don’t really know what happened there.
When were the papyri written?
Well there’re two issues: we have the date of the text and the date of the papyri.
The date of the text is when the author wrote the text.
Such texts are often copied in different languages.
For instance, the Gospel of Matthew was written in the 1st century AD, but the earliest Matthean manuscript that we have is a copy written in the 3rd century AD by a copyist.
The text was written earlier than the document.
Now most Latter-day Saints believe that the text was written by Abraham.
Then we have the date of the papyri which is a separate issue.
Many Latter-day Saints believe that the papyri date to Abraham’s time.
But scholars date it usually either to the Roman period between the 1st century BC and the 1st century AD; or, to the Ptolemaic period which is about the first half of the 2nd century BC or the 3rd century BC.
Okay, we’re starting to run out of time so I’m going to go through the rest of this fairly quickly.
Again, this presentation will be on our website so don’t feel too bad.
We have a lot of bibliographical notes at the end here.
The second stage in the intellectual history begins with the recovery in 1967 of the Metropolitan Museum fragments.
In the summer of 1968 issue of Dialogue there’s a whole bunch of articles on this topic.
And one is an article pointing out that in these manuscripts of the Book of Abraham, the Egyptian symbols in the margin come from the Sensen text.
And also kind of pointing out the way that the Sensen text would have been organized, as we described before.
Then there were several articles by noted Egyptologists of the time—Richard Parker, John Wilson, and Klaus Baer—who translated the Sensen text.
And it was an Egyptian Book of Breathings; it didn’t appear to have anything to do with the Book of Abraham.
I give this cite to Charles Larson.
If you want to read the critical arguments about the Book of Abraham, this is one place where it’s kind of all together, and one place you can read it.
It’s available on the Internet—there’s the site—but if you write to Luke Wilson and tell him you’re a Latter-day Saint, he’ll probably send you one for free.
And that way you’ll get all the pictures.
It’s published by the Institute of Religious Research (IRR) in Michigan and Luke Wilson is the muckety-muck there.
Now in this early period, after the recovery of the papyri, you know the Book of Abraham studies from the faithful side is kind of dominated by Hugh Nibley.
He took a sabbatical year and came back to the University of Chicago and studied with Klaus Baer and John Wilson.
We already mentioned his two-year serial in the Improvement Era; a whole raft of articles in BYU Studies (at least a half dozen).
In 1976, he published his own translation of the Book of Breathings in a book called The Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri: An Egyptian Endowment.
And we put up here a copy of his methodology of illustrating this.
The top line is an actual photograph of a line of text from the papyrus, and then underneath it he has transcribed the hieratic script into hieroglyphic.
And then he took a tracing table and he flipped it so as to read from left to right instead of right to left.
If you look at the symbols you can see they’re the same symbols—they’re just going in a different direction.
Then immediately under that, he gives a transliteration into Roman characters.
And then there are textual notes at the bottom.
Elsewhere he gives a smooth English translation.
So, I bought this book on my mission. I didn’t even know what it was, but I flipped through it and I thought, “Wow this looks interesting,” so I bought it and I actually read it. I’m one of the twelve people in the Church that have actually read this book! (Laughter)
He followed that up with Abraham in Egypt, originally in 1981, re-issued recently by FARMS.
And his final work, One Eternal Round is in preparation by FARMS.
I understand that when the FARMS staff went to pick it up at his house there were stacks of paper all over his bedroom, and living room, and so they had to treat it like an archaeological dig, you know—“This is from level C,” and so on.
There’s probably a big vault somewhere on BYU that has all his manuscripts, so how they’ll ever sort through all that I don’t know, but I understand they’re making good progress.
Now kind of in the footsteps of Nibley, there’s a younger generation—scholars that are interested in the problem but also have Egyptological training.
I’m just going to mention some of the key figures and key publications.
Ed Ashment’s article on the restoration of the facsimiles for publication in Sunstone is probably his most important contribution.
There’s an article by Stephen Thompson that’s kind of an update of Spalding, saying what modern Egyptology makes of the facsimiles.
A little book by John Gee called A Guide to the Joseph Smith Papyri.
Again, later there will be a bigger book, but for right now this is enough to get you started.
Absolutely essential to anyone who’s interested in Book of Abraham studies, a well constructed little book.
Michael Rhodes published a translation and commentary on Facsimile 2—remember that we call that the hypocephalus—in BYU Studies, and he keeps updating it and puts it on his website.
You can go there and read it, print it off, and this is a model for Book of Abraham studies, so it’s a great article.
Since that first generation of Parker, Baer and Wilson, there have been other non-LDS Egyptologists who don’t really understand the Latter-day Saint side of things but who are interested in these documents as Egyptian documents.
And I’ve listed some of those here.
Putting Dee Jay Nelson off to the side, there have been four.
First of all, Klaus Baer in Dialogue in 1968.
Nibley’s which we already mentioned—now these two are actually translations of Louvre Papyrus 3284 which is a longer version.
For an actual direct translation of the Joseph Smith Book of Breathings, there’s one by Robert Ritner published in Dialogue and republished in the Journal of Near Eastern Studies, and one by Michael Rhodes, The Hor Book of Breathings, published by FARMS.
I just want to mention this as an example of the give and take in Book of Abraham studies.
This is a papyrus—not from the Joseph Smith collection—that has a lion couch scene.
So you see the lion couch and Anubis figure behind it (and, do we have it circled?).
Okay, in the box is the name “Abraham” in Greek letters immediately underneath this illustration, showing that someone saw a connection between Abraham and this lion couch scene.
So this is a good example of the give and take.
John Gee publishes an article about this in Insights which is the FARMS newsletter and then a little later publishes another developed version of that article in the Ensign, and that’s obviously on lds.org if you want to read that.
Then Ed Ashment publishes a privately circulated critique of Gee’s work and says, you know, “You went too far with this and with that.”
And then John Gee published a rejoinder to Ashment with one of the all-time great titles in the history of the FARMS Review, “Abracadabra, Isaac and Jacob,” and it’s even funnier if you know what Ashment’s argument is.
So, I think this is good.
I’m a lawyer and lawyers are used to the adversarial system.
There’s give and take and people pound back and forth, and positions get refined that way.
I think if you read all four of these you’re going to be better off than if you just read the first one.
So I don’t feel bad about that at all.
FARMS has been a major source of work on the Book of Abraham in recent years, and the flagship series is the Studies in the Book of Abraham.
This is going to be an encyclopedic set of volumes, large handsome volumes.
When they’re done there will be 15 or 20, or maybe more.
The first one was Traditions about the Early Life of Abraham—and this is that whole thing about taking the English text of the Book of Abraham seriously.
We already mentioned the Rhodes’ translation, which is a very well done book; it’s my favorite of all the translations.
This is the volume that is in preparation now—it’s not out yet.
I actually have a chapter in this volume so I’ll be curious to see that when it comes out.
And then there’s going to be translations of the other papyri in forthcoming volumes.
With that, we’ll close this portion and turn it over to questions.
Thank you.
I don’t know if maybe Kevin has any other thoughts, but I think that, I mean as a speculation, there’s lots of possibilities.
Either just destroyed in Joseph Smith’s time; you know shortly thereafter you would think they would have kept these things safe.
You know, of course, with the early Book of Commandments being burned and Book of Mormons being burned and people being driven from their homes, I mean there’s a lot of possibilities how these translations could have been lost.
I mean even the original dictated copy of the Book of Mormon that Oliver Cowdery wrote down was kept in what they thought was a safe place in a cornerstone, and water got in and destroyed it.
So, I think that that’s open to lots of possibilities.
Do you have any other thoughts on that?
If you’re interested in that you need to read the Stan Kimball article in Dialogue.
I mean; he goes about as far as humanly possible being a detective trying to trace all this.
But someone could pick up the trail and try to find it.
Mark Hofmann was probably thinking about trying to forge a Facsimile 2 because there’s an argument that Facsimile 2 survived.
That would have taken a lot of chutzpah. I don’t think he could’ve pulled it off. Maybe that’s why he didn’t actually try and do it, but he was thinking about it.
He had some papyrus on consignment from Ken Rendell.
This is referring to a letter that Oliver Cowdery wrote. In which he described—well, there’s some question about what he was describing.
But, whatever he described was written in black ink and a portion in red.
And those red portions are called rubrics.
Some of the Book of the Dead manuscripts have rubrics.
The Sensen papyrus has no trace of rubrics.
So, I think the question he’s asking is whether the Sensen papyrus has rubrics. The answer to that is no.
Let me qualify this. I am not an Egyptologist. If we had John Gee or Michael Rhodes or someone like that up here, he could give an authoritative answer to that.
<p>I do know enough to know that people like that, it’s a pet peeve of theirs that people continue to rely on Budge’s.<p>You know there are these paperback Dover publications, The Book of the Dead, and they’re—Budge’s is the early part of the 20th century.
This is very dated stuff.
And so yes, there are better translations available of the Book of the Dead than Budge’s.
I know there’s one by Joseph Allen that I have. But again, I’m not an Egyptologist so take whatever I say with a grain of salt.
<p>While the presentation was a very helpful scan of various critical and historical issues dealing with the Book of Abraham, [you] did not give evidence of its divine origin.
Well that wasn’t really our purpose.
Our purpose was to deal with the polemics of it.
We’re bracketing doctrine or devotional approaches. So yes, there’s much more that could be said. We’re just dealing with the anti-Mormon arguments in this presentation.
So what evidence is there?
Well, it’s like any other religious text.
I mean you have to come at it from a perspective of faith.
And there are lots of evidences.
If you want a place to start:
That will be a positive introduction of evidences for the Book of Abraham.
If 95% (and it’s more like 85%) of the Joseph Smith Papyri were destroyed in the Museum fire. This 95% contained that which was translated. Why do we care about the irrelevant amount remaining, at least from a Book of Abraham translation perspective?
<p>This is assuming the missing papyrus theory, which is that the source for the Book of Abraham was among that which was lost, as part of the fire or otherwise.
<p>So why do we care about that which is extant?
And so we have to deal with this material from that perspective.
But you’re right. If you take the missing papyrus view, then the rest of the material is kind of irrelevant. Except for JSP I, which is the original source for Facsimile 1</p>
FARMS is going to publish translations of the Book of the Dead manuscripts in the Joseph Smith collection.
They’re just like any other Book of the Dead manuscripts. But since they belonged to Joseph, they were part of the collection.
They were displayed by Lucy Mack Smith, you know.
I think we do have an historical interest.
<p>If some of the papyri were destroyed in the fire, such as the scroll of Semminis and others, how do we know we had them?&amp;lt;/p>
We have fragments of all of them except for Amenofis.
<p>That one, which had chapter 45 of the Book of the Dead, is the only one that we don’t have anything left of. /p>
<p>We have notes from, I believe, the Kirtland Egyptian Papers, so we can tie that to Amenofis.</p>
So that’s the only one that is completely missing.
The rest of them, we do have some fragments that have survived.
TOPICS
Book of Abraham
Kirtland Egyptian Papers
Missing Papyri
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