This week in Come Follow Me we studied Moses and Abraham 3. Both books are in the canonized scripture that we probably speak the lest about, The Pearl of Great Price. The book of Moses is a revelation that Joseph Smith received while working on his "translation" of the Bible. The book of Abraham is from a "translation" of some Egyptian scrolls the church acquired at great expense in 1835. There is a reason I put the word "translate" in parenthesis. When I was young I thought that Joseph Smith translated these two documents in the traditional sense. He saw the text in another language, deciphered the meaning of the words in the original text, and then wrote the words in English as the new text. Now we know that Joseph Smith didn't really translate any text this way. He didn't know ancient Egyptian or or the Nephite language. He, at one point, tried to learn Hebrew, but I, having studied Hebrew for several years now, can imagine that, with all else that was going on in his life, he never really mastered that ancient language either.
What then does it mean when we say that Joseph Smith "translated" the Book of Mormon, the Bible, and the Egyptian papyri? We need to go back to the root of the word "translate." It comes from two Latin word parts: "trans" which means, "across" and latus, which comes from the participle of a verb that means, "to carry." So, to translate something is to carry it across from one state to another. When you translate in the traditional sense, you carry a word from one language to another. In this case, however, Joseph Smith carried a message from God to us.
Some people get worried about the Book of Abraham. When I was little, historians thought that the original papyri Joseph Smith had were all destroyed in the great Chicago fire. Since then, researchers have found fragments of the papyri that were not destroyed in the fire, and have translated them (in the traditional way) and found they are standard Egyptian burial texts from the 1st century BCE.
So the question is, did the original papyri that was burned in the fire contain the Book of Abraham as we now have it in the Pearl of Great Price, but written in a different language (Hebrew or Egyptian), or did Joseph Smith make it all up?
The answer is probably "no" to both questions. I, personally, doubt that the papyri ever contained an account written by Abraham. I think they were probably just the standard funerary texts found with most Egyptian mummies. Yet, I don't believe that Joseph Smith just made it all up. I think we need to remember that Joseph Smith was as much of a prophet as Abraham was. As a prophet, he could receive revelation from God, just like Abraham did.
We see from reading the Doctrine and Covenants, that God tends to wait for Joseph Smith to ask a question before he gives a revelation. Joseph asked what church he should join, God gave him the first vision. Joseph asked about the communalism practiced by the Campbellites, and he got the law of consecration. Joseph asked about the "plain and precious things" that were taken from the Bible, and he got (over a period of years) the Joseph Smith translation of the Bible, including the book of Moses.
I think that the Egyptian papyri caused Joseph to ask something. The pictures on the scroll made him think, and he went to the Lord with a question. Maybe the facsimile reminded him about when Abraham was almost sacrificed by his father and he asked about that. Once he asked, the Lord was able to reveal to him the Book of Abraham which contained important information about our pre-earth life and the order of heaven that had been lost from the Hebrew Bible, and, indeed, from all the scripture that Joseph Smith had access to. It was important information Joseph Smith and the Church needed to know, and once Joseph asked, God told him about an interaction he had with Abraham that contained the information. Joseph Smith wrote it down and now we have it.
I might be totally wrong. There might have actually been an account of Abraham on the papyri that was destroyed in the fire. We will never know. To me, it doesn't matter if there was or was not. What matters is that it was a revelation from God, first to Abraham, and then to Joseph, and now to us.
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