Charles Larson, By His Own Hand Upon Papyrus: A New
Look at the Joseph Smith Papyri. Institute for
Religious Research, 1992, 240 pages, appendix, notes, index,
ISBN 0-960963-2-6 (paperback).
This book examines one of the most significant events in
modern Mormon history — the rediscovery in 1967 of the
Egyptian papyri from which Joseph Smith claimed to
translate the Book of Abraham in the Pearl of Great
Price. The title of Larson's book is taken from the
title page of the Book of Abraham:
A translation of some ancient records, that have fallen into our hands from the catacombs of Egypt. The writings of Abraham while he was in Egypt, called the Book of Abraham, written by his own hand upon papyrus.
The Joseph Smith papyri, long thought to have been
destroyed in a fire in Chicago in the late 19th century,
had in reality found their way to the Metropolitan
Museum of Art in New York City, where they came to
public attention in 1967. Their rediscovery established
for certain that Joseph Smith had authentic, ancient
Egyptian documents in his possession when he produced
the Book of Abraham.
Unlike the gold plates of the Book of Mormon, which
scholars were never able to examine, these Egyptian
texts give the actual documents from which Joseph Smith
claimed to have produced one of the LDS church's
scriptures. Therefore, they provide the first real
opportunity to examine the prophet's claims in an
objective and scientific manner.
In the first two chapters of By His Own Hand Upon
Papyrus, former Mormon and Brigham Young University
graduate Charles M. Larson, recounts the circumstances
under which Joseph Smith acquired the two Egyptian
scrolls, and his claim to have identified one of them as
an account by the Biblical patriarch Abraham of his
sojourn in Egypt (as described in Genesis 12:10-20).
Then in chapters 3-10 Larson steps the reader through a
detailed array of primary physical evidences which
establish four major points: (1) the papyri which came
to public attention in 1967 (color photographs of which
are reproduced in the book) are indisputably those which
Joseph had in his possession when he produced the Book
of Abraham, (2) Joseph Smith did purport that the Book
of Abraham was a translation from one of these papyrus
scrolls, (3) the scrolls are now known to date from
around the time of Christ, some 2,000 years after the
time of Abraham, and (4) the scrolls have been
identified by Egyptologists — including LDS scholars —
as common, pagan Egyptian burial documents, that do not
mention Abraham and have no connection to the contents
of the Book of Abraham in the Pearl of Great Price.
Dr. Stephen E. Thompson, an LDS scholar with a Ph.D. in
Egyptology, has commented favorably on the book By
His Own Hand Upon Papyrus, though he does not
endorse all the book's contents
(click here for excerpts). At the 1993 Northeast
Sunstone Symposium in Boston, Dr. Thompson said of
Larson's book:
In my opinion, it's the best source to go to if you want to know what's been going on with the Book of Abraham in [the] church. I mean, he has a pretty good summary of all the types of approaches that have been made. He does a pretty good job of explaining what they are, what the papyri are. He's [got] great pictures of the papyri. That's the nicest thing; you can really - really neat photos [sic] of the papyri themselves. And people worry about the accuracy, is this book accurate or not? Well I'll tell you, he's far more accurate than anything Hugh Nibley ever wrote on the subject, okay. So if you're willing to read Nibley, you can read this guy and not worry about it. I mean, because Nibley is far, far more free with his treatment of primary and secondary sources than this guy ever would be .... Nothing that's been written from an apologetic point of view comes close to it in accuracy.
By His Own Hand Upon Papyrus includes an
impressive foldout panel with the first published
full-color photographs of the Joseph Smith papyri. It
also includes photographs of Joseph Smith's original
translation manuscripts for the Book of Abraham, and
translations by modern Egyptologists of the Egyptian
text of the Joseph Smith papyri.
Later chapters of the book provide an up-to-the-minute
examination of the various theories which Mormon
scholars have put forth to defend the integrity of the
Book of Abraham.
Download the entire text of the
book,
By His Own Hand Upon Papyrus