The Book of Abraham and the Documentary Hypothesis

As we’ve discussed in previous sections on biblical scholarship and Mormonism, Genesis as we have it today was compiled from multiple sources and then woven together by a redactor into a single Book of Genesis. This is clear when you look at the differing creation stories as well as the two flood stories and the contradictions within them.

This is a massive problem for the Book of Abraham as well, because Joseph Smith relies so heavily on the King James Bible version of Genesis, but does not realize that the book is using two separate sources that contradict each other. Remember that Abraham lived about 2,000 years ago, yet these documents that were used to create Genesis are likely written in the 6th or 5th century BCE.

In other words, using the text of Genesis as a writing of Abraham himself is anachronistic as Abraham would have lived in around 2000 BCE, but pulling from two separate sources that both date long after Abraham complicates it further. Remember that these books are called the Books of Moses in the Book of Mormon (1 Nephi 5:11, 1 Nephi 19:23), yet we’re also told that Abraham, who lived around 700 years earlier, had access to this material which had not yet been written.

To be clear, Abraham could not have had access to material that would have been written, even by the Book of Mormon narrative, 700 years later. If Abraham is a true, historical figure, he would have lived over 1,000 years (likely 1,300-1,500 years) before Genesis was compiled. This becomes even more problematic as the Book of Abraham states that “records have come into my hands,” (Abraham 1:28) making explicit that Abraham is working from the source text which includes retellings of Genesis in the Book of Abraham.

Biblical scholar and former CES instructor David Bokovoy outlines the problem of using Genesis as a source text for the Book of Abraham in his interview on Mormon Stories:
 

"Beginning with Genesis Chapter 11 where Abraham is introduced in a lengthy genealogical list, we then jumped to the narrative portion, and that's verse 28 So, basically 28 through the end of the chapter, verse 32:
 

11:28 And Haran died before his father Terah in the land of his nativity, in Ur of the Chaldees.

11:29 And Abram and Nahor took them wives: the name of Abram's wife was Sarai; and the name of Nahor's wife, Milcah, the daughter of Haran, the father of Milcah, and the father of Iscah.

11:30 But Sarai was barren; she had no child.

11:31 And Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran his son's son, and Sarai his daughter in law, his son Abram's wife; and they went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan; and they came unto Haran, and dwelt there.

11:32 And the days of Terah were two hundred and five years: and Terah died in Haran.

...what I just read to you in that introduction... that all stems from the Priestly document. Notice what happens here. Abraham's father takes him out of the land of Ur, and it already identifies and says Abraham's father is going to take him into the land of Canaan. Then, if we ignore the chapter division and just moved from Genesis Chapter 11 right into 12 then we read:
 

12:1 Now the LORD had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will show thee.

It's repetition and it's inconsistent because in the Priestly narrative, which stems before this in Chapter 11 that we just read, Abraham leaves the land of the Chaldees as leaves Ur with his dad, who's very much alive, and they're leaving and they're going on a journey to Canaan. Then this next story it tells God speaks to him and says, 'Hey, get out of the land of Ur and leave your dad behind.' See, there's inconsistency there, but it makes sense when we recognize that the second narrative in Genesis 12:1-2 is from an entirely different historical document, edited and compiled together in the Book of Genesis as Genesis 11 and Genesis Chapter 12. Genesis 11 stems from the Priestly narrative and this first part of 12 where we have Yahweh mentioned is J or the J source. Now, if we jump then to the actual book of Abraham that Joseph Smith produces in Kirtland, Ohio, watch what happens: Not only is this story all presented in first person, as if Abraham himself is now telling the account [as opposed to the verses this is adapted from in Genesis]... Chapter two of Abraham:
 

1 Now the Lord God caused the famine to wax sore in the land of Ur, insomuch that Haran, my brother, died; but Terah, my father, yet lived in the land of Ur, of the Chaldees.

2 And it came to pass that I, Abraham, took Sarai to wife, and Nahor, my brother, took Milcah to wife, who was the daughter of Haran.

All of that information right there is a reflection of the Priestly source in Genesis 11. It's a revision of that. But then now here's the J (Yahwist source) material in verse three.
 

3 Now the Lord had said unto me: Abraham, get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will show thee.

So notice how those are two different historical documents that contradict one another that have been brought together in the Book of Abraham as if it is one single harmonious narrative put into the words of Abraham? And that is an illustration of how source criticism presents direct challenges to the claims, traditional claims, and assumptions regarding the book of Abraham. How could this come from Abraham when we know that these were two separate historical sources written years, many centuries after he would have supposedly lived? And that's just one illustration of many, including the end of the Book of Abraham, which is going to again present a retelling of the opening chapters of Genesis with the Priestly creation story and then the J creation story, as if it's one harmonious text all presented as if it's divine revelation from Abraham."

You can listen to David Bokovoy explain the problem of the Book of Abraham in greater detail here, but the same problems of anachronisms from reliance on the King James Bible that we saw earlier in the biblical scholarship section occur in the Book of Abraham as well.

​

Anachronisms in the Book of Abraham

Because Joseph Smith is borrowing so heavily from Genesis, which was not written until long after Abraham's time as explained above, it contains anachronisms that tell us that this is not a text written by Abraham in 2000 BCE, but a 19th century work by Joseph Smith. Just take a look at the first verse:
 

“In the land of the Chaldeans, at the residence of my fathers, I, Abraham, saw that it was needful for me to obtain another place of residence;”

Note that this book is written in the first person just as the Book of Mormon and Book of Moses, leaving no space for this to be a writing that was done after Abraham would have lived. This is important because we know the church itself admits the papyrus was dated about 2,000 years after Abraham would have lived, and there is simply no way this could have been written by Abraham given its reliance on the King James Bible, written over three thousand years later.

But more importantly, we can show that the Book of Abraham begins with an anachronism that further dates it to well after Abraham’s life with the use of the “land of the Chaldeans.” The term Chaldeans is pulled from Genesis 11:28, which states:
 

“And Haran died before his father Terah in the land of his nativity, in Ur of the Chaldees.”

As we’ve stated before, Genesis was not compiled until at the earliest 1000 BCE, because Hebrew was not a written language until this time, and scholars can tell that Genesis was originally written in Hebrew. As Dr. Bokovoy explains:
 

“Chaldea was a Semitic speaking country that existed between the late tenth and early ninth and mid sixth centuries BC, after which the country and its people were absorbed and simply assimilated into Babylonia and the description that we find. They're both in the Book of Abraham and in the Book of Genesis: Ur of the Chaldees designates Ur with southern Mesopotamia and the time in which the Semitic speaking Chaldeans controlled that city state. And the Chaldeans controlled Mesopotamia and specifically, Ur, and this is interesting, but the dates are 626 through 539 BCE, and this means that the text from the Bible that refer to this area as Chaldean ultimately derived from that time period.” (Radio Free Mormon Interview)

This is yet another reason why scholars date the compilation of Genesis to this time window, but this dating is something that Joseph Smith would never have been aware of when using Genesis as a foundational text to build the Book of Abraham from. Even church historian Stephen Smoot acknowledges this problem:
 

“Unlike the vague and contradictory details provided in Genesis, the Book of Abraham appears to ground Abraham’s Ur in Syria. The added geographical (Olishem/Ulišum) and cultural details (an Egyptian presence at Abraham’s homeland) in the Book of Abraham make a northern location for Ur essentially inescapable. At the same time, however, problems persist for the Book of Abraham. For one thing, its text’s mentioning of the Chaldeans, as with Genesis, is, according to our presently available evidence, probably anachronistic. Perhaps future findings will overturn this, but as things stand at the moment, this remains a problem for the Book of Abraham’s historicity (although not a fatal one). Latter-day Saints approaching the historicity of the Book of Abraham should therefore be cautious and nuanced in how they evaluate the text’s historical claims.” (FAIR Mormon)

As Dr. Bokovoy notes in his interview, there is no “probably” about it. As we have pointed out in other sections, the use of the word “probably” there is used to give plausibility, but there simply is none when you look at the use of Chaldeans in a text that needs to be created around 2000 BCE. Smoot does go on to state that the Olishem/Ulišum connection reinforces the book’s authenticity, and we will cover Olishem later in this write-up.

In other words, the very first verse of the Book of Abraham tells us that it was written long after Abraham lived by someone who had access to the King James Bible. The very words Ur or Chaldees are anachronistic since these are English derivatives of Hebrew Scripture that didn’t exist until well after Abraham’s time (Hayes, A manual of Sumerian grammar and text, 36), and the Book of Abraham would have taken place many centuries before there were any people who could even be identified as Chaldeans. Even ignoring all of these problems with the translation process, the very first verse tells us that this is the work of Joseph Smith.
 

Patriarchal Blessing in the Book of Abraham

The very next verse in the Book of Abraham, Abraham 1:2, has language taken from a patriarchal blessing given by Joseph Smith Sr and compiled by Oliver Cowdery. First, from the Book of Abraham:
 

“2 And, finding there was greater happiness and peace and rest for me, I sought for the blessings of the fathers, and the right whereunto I should be ordained to administer the same; having been myself a follower of righteousness, desiring also to be one who possessed great knowledge, and to be a greater follower of righteousness, and to possess a greater knowledge, and to be a father of many nations, a prince of peace, and desiring to receive instructions, and to keep the commandments of God, I became a rightful heir, a High Priest, holding the right belonging to the fathers.”

Now from the patriarchal blessing:
 

“...[W]e diligently sought for the right of the fathers, and the authority of the holy priesthood, and the power to administer the same; for we desired to be followers of righteousness and the possessors or greater knowledge....After this, we received the high and holy priesthood...”

This patriarchal blessing was given in 1834, and the first portion of the Book of Abraham was written in 1835. Even FAIR Mormon concedes that “At the outset, we’ll assume that there is an authorial relationship between the two since the language does appear to be similar.” Although FAIR then goes on to say it is unlikely that Joseph Smith had access to this blessing, the language above speaks for itself.

That means in the first verse of the Book of Abraham we have an anachronism that comes from using the King James Bible as a source text, and the second verse relies on a patriarchal blessing given just a year earlier. We’re only two verses in and it becomes clear that Joseph Smith is the author of the Book of Abraham, as there is no possible way that Abraham would have known about either of these sources when he would have lived, yet it is written in the first person as if Abraham himself wrote these ideas on papyrus.
 

Use of Hebrew from Joseph Smith’s Teachings of Joshua Sexias

Scholars now date the production of the Book of Abraham to two district time frames, with church historian Brian Hauglid putting it simply as this:
 

“I agree (with Dan Vogel’s assessment) that only Abr. 1:1-2:18 were produced in 1835 and that Abr. 2:19-5:21 were produced in Nauvoo.” (Facebook Post)

Essentially we know through the documentary evidence that only Abraham 1:1-2:18 were produced in 1835 and that Joseph Smith set the project aside until he began translating again in 1842.

This is important because in 1836 Joseph Smith began taking lessons on Hebrew with Joshua Sexias. As Dr. Matthew Grey, professor at BYU, states:
 

“The Book of Abraham translation began in 1835, but as far as we can tell, he only finished the first two chapters in that early period. Then as he studied Hebrew, he gleaned insights into additional Abraham material. It was then in early 1842, having since studied Hebrew, that he revisited the Abraham translation and picked up where he left off. It is in the later Abraham materials—Abraham 3, 4, 5, and in the facsimile explanations (all of which were finalized in Nauvoo)—that we begin to see Joseph as a translator incorporating the material he had learned in his Hebrew class into his final publication of the Book of Abraham.” (LDS Perspectives Podcast)

In other words, Joseph Smith began the first two chapters of the Book of Abraham in 1835, took Hebrew lessons in 1836, and then completed the Book of Abraham in 1842. The reason this is important is that the 1835 translation does not include any of the Hebrew transliterations that he learned from Joshua Sexias, but the remained of the Book of Abraham completed in 1842 is littered with it.

This again tells us that the Book of Abraham was written by Joseph Smith, as Abraham’s writings would not have been impacted by Joseph Smith’s use of Hebrew that matches Joshua Sexias’ exact transliterations.

More from the interview with Dr. Grey:
 

Laura Hales: “These all included Seixas transliterations?”

Dr. Grey: “They did. Yeah, so when Joseph Smith used these Hebrew words, he spelled them in ways that he was taught by his Hebrew instructor back in Kirtland, with that distinct Sephardic spelling"

Again, this scholarship tells us that the Book of Abraham material completed in 1842 contains Hebrew language that Joseph Smith learned after the initial material in 1835, and is used with the exact transliteration that Sexias used and taught. We already know from the papyrus that the translation was wrong, but this further tells us that the Book of Abraham had to have been written by Joseph Smith as we can pinpoint both a patriarchal blessing along with Hebrew transliterations that Joseph just happened to have when the text was being produced.

Back to Dr. Grey:
 

Dr. Grey: “Then, finally, I think the most profound impact that his Hebrew studies had on the translation of Abraham was in the Abrahamic creation account in Abraham Chapters 4 and 5. Joseph knew before studying Hebrew that the Book of Abraham would contain creation material. In early 1842, when he revisited —or at least finalized —the Abrahamic creation account, it seems that he drew heavily upon the King James Version of Genesis 1–2. Then at key moments, he altered the KJV wording and added insights he received in his Hebrew class, such as the plurality of Gods as a reflection of his translation of the Hebrew word “Elohim.”"

This is important because it shows us how Joseph Smith’s theology evolved regarding the godhead. As we cover in our section on the First Vision, Joseph Smith did not teach that God and Jesus were separate beings until he changed his First Vision account in 1838, but you can see here where the theology evolved after Joseph Smith learned that in the Hebrew Bible there was a belief in multiple Gods. Because he learned this from Joshua Sexias in 1836, he includes it in the Book of Abraham portion written in 1842 to use the scripture as a vehicle to teach that there is indeed a plurality of Gods, which is something that Joseph Smith had not thought of yet in 1835 when he began the Book of Abraham.

One final paragraph from Dr. Grey:
 

“That’s category number one in his use of Hebrew: his use of Hebrew vocabulary such as the Hebrew word for heavens (which is “shaumahyeem”), or the Hebrew word for the expanse or the firmament (which is “raukeeyang”), or the Hebrew word for the stars (which is “kokaubeem”). These are words that Joseph borrowed from his Hebrew studies and used to explain the Egyptian images.”

 

Just as we see Joseph Smith using the King James Bible to pull source material from, we can also show that he pulls ideas and concepts from other sources available to him when producing these writings. This is crucial because in this case it makes clear that all of these materials were available to Joseph Smith but would not have been available to Abraham, which tells us clearly who the author of this material is.
 

Urim and Thummim

Chapter three of the Book of Abraham begins by stating that “And I, Abraham, had the Urim and Thummim, which the Lord my God had given unto me, in Ur of the Chaldees.”

As we outlined above, "Ur of the Chaldees" is already anachronistic, but the use of the Urim and Thummim is attempting to make Abraham a seer in the way that Joseph Smith claimed to be through his treasure digging days as well as how he translated the Book of Mormon.

The problem, however, is that the Urim and Thummim from the Bible is not a device that can show revelations, visions, or ancient text, but a simple way to get a yes or no response to a question. While the Book of Abraham claims that the Urim and Thummim allowed Abraham to see visions of astronomy, the Urim and Thummim simply did not work that way.