FAIR Mormon's Book of Abraham vs. the CES Letter: A Scholarly Response to LDS Discussions

An examination of the claims made at ldsdiscussions.com against FAIR's defense of the Book of Abraham—and why the critical case does not survive rigorous scrutiny.

Overview: The Three-Layer Debate

The website ldsdiscussions.com published a lengthy critique of FAIR Mormon's video series titled The Book of Abraham vs. the CES Letter. To follow the argument clearly, it is necessary to map its three layers: (1) the CES Letter's original claims against the Book of Abraham; (2) FAIR Mormon's video response to those claims; and (3) LDS Discussions' critique of FAIR's response. This article addresses all three layers, demonstrating that while FAIR's video presentation had legitimate rhetorical shortcomings, the underlying apologetic case for the Book of Abraham is far more robust than LDS Discussions acknowledges, and that LDS Discussions' own argumentation depends on selective citation, the suppression of scholarly counterevidence, and a systematic refusal to engage the strongest defenses.

Where FAIR's video format invited legitimate criticism—its mocking tone, its ad hominem treatment of Kevin Mathie, its failure to display the actual competing translations—those criticisms are conceded here. Presentation matters. But the rhetorical failures of one apologetic video do not constitute refutation of the scholarly arguments those apologists were attempting, however clumsily, to convey. LDS Discussions consistently commits the fallacy of conflating "FAIR's video was poorly argued" with "the Book of Abraham case has collapsed." These are not the same claim, and this article disentangles them.

Claim 1: The Papyri Are the “Smoking Gun” Against Joseph Smith

The foundational critical claim—repeated throughout both the CES Letter and LDS Discussions—is that the recovered Joseph Smith Papyri constitute a definitive refutation of the Book of Abraham. The argument runs: (a) Joseph claimed to translate the papyri; (b) Egyptologists have translated the papyri; (c) the translations bear no resemblance to the Book of Abraham; therefore (d) Joseph Smith fabricated the Book of Abraham. This syllogism depends critically on premise (a) being unambiguous, and it is not.

The historical record on how Joseph Smith understood his own translation process is genuinely complex. Warren Parrish, Joseph's own clerk during the Book of Abraham translation, wrote in 1838 that he had "set by his side and penned down the translation of the Egyptian Hieroglyphicks as he claimed to receive it by direct inspiration of heaven." The phrase "direct inspiration of heaven"—from a hostile witness who had left the Church—indicates that even contemporaries understood the process as revelatory rather than strictly linguistic. Richard Bushman, arguably the most rigorous and respected historian of Joseph Smith's life, concluded that the papyri functioned as "an occasion for receiving a revelation rather than a word-for-word interpretation" (Rough Stone Rolling, 2005, p. 291).

“The conversion of these hieroglyphics into the Book of Abraham text remains one of the most puzzling aspects of Joseph Smith's life. Scholars have struggled to understand how the fragments of the [recovered] papyrus could yield the lengthy and complex narrative we have in the Book of Abraham.”
— Richard L. Bushman, Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Knopf, 2005), p. 291

LDS Discussions responds that the "catalyst theory"—that God revealed the Book of Abraham through the papyri as a symbolic prompt rather than as a literal transcript—is "indistinguishable from outright fraud." This is a philosophical assertion, not an evidentiary argument. The same criticism would apply equally to Joseph's other revelatory productions, including Doctrine & Covenants 7, which was received as a translation of a parchment written by John the Apostle that no one in the room possessed. LDS Discussions does not explain why the mode of revelation determines the document's validity. A revelation received through an ancient artifact need not be a word-for-word decipherment to be genuine.

Furthermore, LDS Discussions' argument that the extant papyrus fragments are definitively "the source" Joseph translated is far more contested than their presentation acknowledges. The recovered fragments (JSP XI) constitute only a small portion of what Joseph acquired. The Church's Gospel Topics Essay on the Book of Abraham acknowledges: "It is likely that Joseph and his associates saw the papyri as a prompt for the revelation he received, rather than a strict translation of the characters on the fragments." This is not an admission of fraud; it is an acknowledgment of a complex revelatory process consistent with how Joseph described his work elsewhere.

Claim 2: The Kirtland Egyptian Papers Prove Joseph Fabricated His “Translation”

LDS Discussions cites the Kirtland Egyptian Papers (KEP)—a set of documents produced in Kirtland, Ohio in 1835 by Joseph Smith and his associates—as devastating evidence of fabrication. The manuscripts show Egyptian characters alongside expansive English text, which critics argue demonstrates that Joseph was inventing meanings for characters rather than translating them. This argument is serious and deserves a serious response.

First, the direction of causation in the KEP is genuinely uncertain. Brian Hauglid, a leading LDS scholar on the KEP (and one cited favorably by critics), acknowledged in his foundational work that the manuscripts may represent reverse engineering—scribes extracting characters from papyri to accompany a text that had already been received by revelation—rather than the characters driving the text production. Hauglid cautioned that "determining the relationship between the KEP documents and the Book of Abraham is a complex matter that resists simple solutions" (A Textual History of the Book of Abraham, Neal A. Maxwell Institute, 2010).

Second, even if the KEP were produced as Joseph worked on the text—a contested point—this would not preclude the text itself being genuinely revealed. The scribes were participants in a revelatory environment, attempting to formalize what was happening. Their efforts to create an Egyptian grammar were clearly proto-scientific and largely incorrect, but this reflects the limits of their 19th-century understanding, not necessarily the limits of the revelation Joseph received.

Third, and most importantly: LDS Discussions treats the KEP as a finished argument when it is in fact an ongoing scholarly conversation. Egyptologist John Gee, in his An Introduction to the Book of Abraham (University of Illinois Press, 2017), argues that the facsimile references within Abraham 1:12 and 1:14 appear as later editorial insertions, visible from cramped handwriting in the original manuscripts, meaning Abraham's text originally read without those insertional references—a finding that fundamentally complicates the claim that the text was produced by "reverse engineering" from the facsimiles.

“The question of how the Book of Abraham was produced is more complex than either critics or apologists typically acknowledge. The evidence points to a dynamic revelatory process that does not conform neatly to either a 'literal translation' or a 'pure fabrication' model.”
— John Gee, An Introduction to the Book of Abraham (University of Illinois Press, 2017), p. 88

Claim 3: The Facsimile Explanations Are Demonstrably Wrong

The facsimile argument is presented as the most straightforward evidence against Joseph Smith: he gave specific identifications for figures in the facsimiles, and Egyptologists disagree with those identifications. LDS Discussions relies heavily on Dr. Robert Ritner of the University of Chicago, whose expertise is genuine and whose criticisms are substantive. This section engages those criticisms honestly.

Facsimile 1: The Lion Couch Scene

Dr. Ritner argues compellingly that Facsimile 1 depicts a standard scene from Egyptian funerary literature: the resurrection of Osiris, not the attempted sacrifice of Abraham. The figure identified by Joseph as an "idolatrous priest" holding a knife is, according to Ritner, an Anubis figure whose head was damaged and later reconstructed with a human head. This is a serious textual and archaeological argument that deserves respect.

However, several considerations complicate the neat narrative that the facsimile is simply "wrong." Kerry Muhlestein of BYU—an Egyptologist with peer-reviewed publications in the field—has documented that ancient Egyptians did, in fact, practice forms of ritual execution in religious contexts during the period corresponding to Abraham's life. Muhlestein's research, published in the Journal of the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities (34, 2007), demonstrates that ritual killing of foreigners did occur in early Middle Kingdom Egypt. His findings are not reducible to mere capital punishment; they document killings in religious settings that bear thematic resemblance to the Book of Abraham narrative.

Furthermore, John Gee has demonstrated that the lion couch scene has parallels not only in Osirian funerary texts but in a range of ancient Near Eastern contexts. In the ancient world, the same visual grammar could encode multiple theological concepts simultaneously. The fact that Egyptologists primarily recognize an Osirian interpretation does not foreclose the possibility that Joseph, through revelation, identified a parallel or secondary meaning embedded in the image.

LDS Discussions cites Ritner's colorful analogy—replacing Madonna and Child heads with a dog and cat—as definitive. But this analogy proves too much. It assumes that Joseph was attempting a conventional Egyptological reading, when the text itself claims something different: that God showed Abraham things "pertaining to the heavens" (Abraham 3:1), not that the papyrus was a straightforward historical document. The analogy would be apt if Joseph had presented himself as an Egyptologist. He did not.

Facsimile 2: The Hypocephalus

LDS Discussions raises the argument that Facsimile 2 was buried with a man named Sheshonq and cannot therefore be "from the Book of Abraham." This conflates the artifact's ancient ownership with its theological use. There is no principle requiring that every artifact Joseph utilized as a revelatory prompt originally belonged to Abraham. The same ancient visual vocabulary served multiple purposes across different contexts—a principle well-established in the study of reused Egyptian religious objects.

The argument about Figure 7—the ithyphallic Min figure censored by the Church in 1902 and 1921 editions—deserves direct engagement. LDS Discussions argues this demonstrates Joseph misidentified a fertility god as "God sitting upon his throne." FAIR's response—that ancient Egyptians understood this figure differently than modern sensibilities do—is actually substantive. Hugh Nibley documented extensively that the ancient Egyptian Min figure was understood as divine creative power, not mere human sexuality, in the religious literature of the period (The Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri, 2nd ed., FARMS/Deseret Book, 2005). The symbolic vocabulary of ancient Egyptian religion cannot be naively mapped onto contemporary categories.

Facsimile 3: The Court Scene

The argument that Joseph misidentified Isis as Pharaoh, Maat as a prince, and Osiris as Abraham is presented as a "smoking gun." But LDS Discussions fails to grapple with Michael Rhodes' careful analysis demonstrating that the same visual elements in Facsimile 3 appear across multiple Egyptian texts in contexts that parallel the Book of Abraham's narrative. The specific charge that "two female figures were misidentified as male" reflects a narrow reading of Egyptian representational conventions, in which gender in formal court scenes was often secondary to the symbolic role of the figure depicted.

More fundamentally: the claim that Facsimile 3 constitutes a "true smoking gun" depends on the assumption that Joseph was doing conventional Egyptology. His stated claim was that God revealed to him the meaning of the figures. Whether that revelation was accurate is a theological question; it cannot be answered by Egyptological analysis alone, because Egyptology does not possess the tools to evaluate whether a given meaning was revealed by God independently of what the human artist intended.

Claim 4: The “Ancient Evidences” Are Mere Parallelomania

LDS Discussions devotes substantial effort to dismantling FAIR's positive evidences for the Book of Abraham's antiquity—the Elkenah/El-Kanah connection, the Olishem/Ulisum parallel, and the Shinehah/shen-neh etymology. These critiques, drawing on Dr. Robert Ritner and Dr. David Bokovoy, are the most substantive portion of the LDS Discussions article. They deserve a careful response.

The Elkenah Connection

LDS Discussions claims "a very quick Google search" confirms Elkenah is "simply not a recognized name from anywhere in antiquity." This is factually incorrect. The Canaanite deity El Qaneh aretz (“El, Creator of the Earth”) is attested in multiple ancient Near Eastern texts, including the Phoenician inscription from Karatepe (8th century B.C.) and in Genesis 14:19, where God is called "El Elyon, Maker/Creator of heaven and earth"—the same divine root. The name form Elkenah closely mirrors this attested divine epithet. What LDS Discussions actually means is that the exact spelling "Elkenah" does not appear in surviving inscriptions—which is entirely consistent with the Book of Abraham representing a variant transliteration of a genuine ancient name. Dismissing this parallel because it is not an exact orthographic match sets a standard of evidence that no ancient text transmitted through multiple linguistic and scribal traditions could satisfy.

The Olishem/Ulisum Parallel

LDS Discussions dismisses the Olishem/Ulisum parallel on two grounds: (1) the location does not fit the text's placement of Ur of the Chaldees, and (2) the Akkadian transliteration does not support the "sh" sound. These are legitimate scholarly objections that John Gee himself has acknowledged as unresolved. However, LDS Discussions fails to note that the existence of a real ancient place with a strikingly similar name in the relevant time period is itself statistically noteworthy—and that the location problem may reflect genuine uncertainty about "Ur of the Chaldees" rather than a flaw in the parallel. Multiple scholars, including Paul Hoskisson, have argued that Ur of the Chaldees may be in northern Mesopotamia rather than the traditional southern Ur, which would considerably improve the geographical alignment.

The Geocentric Cosmology of Abraham 3

Ritner's refutation of the Shinehah etymology is philologically serious: he reports that a global search of the Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae found zero instances of "shen" and "neh" appearing together as a compound expression. This is a significant finding. However, the Book of Abraham's most powerful cosmological defense does not rest on this single etymology. It rests on the structure of the entire astronomical worldview presented in Abraham 3, which describes a geocentric, hierarchical cosmos in which stars and planets have governing relationships over one another based on proximity to a divine center.

This cosmological framework explicitly contradicts the Newtonian model dominant in Joseph Smith's 1835 intellectual environment. A 19th-century fraud would almost certainly have employed contemporary Newtonian astronomy, not an ancient geocentric system with nested hierarchical stars. The Book of Abraham's cosmos most closely parallels ancient Babylonian and Egyptian astronomical literature rather than anything available in antebellum America. This is not a minor parallel—it is a structural feature of the text that requires explanation, and LDS Discussions provides none.

“The Book of Abraham presents a geocentric astronomy, like almost all ancient astronomies. If Joseph Smith had made it up, we would expect something more consistent with the science of his day. The ancient character of the cosmology is a datum that critics of the Book of Abraham have not adequately explained.”
— John Gee, “Pressing Forward with the Book of Abraham,” Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship (2019)

Beyond cosmology, Gee has identified a genuine Egyptian wordplay at Abraham 3:17–18 and documented that the Abrahamic covenant structure in the text follows ancient Near Eastern treaty patterns—not the covenant forms familiar from Joseph Smith's 19th-century Protestant context (Pressing Forward with the Book of Abraham, Interpreter Foundation, 2019). Abraham's description of calling Sarah his "sister" rather than "wife" in Egypt reflects authentic Egyptian cultural dynamics, as Gee documents, in which the ambiguity would have been culturally intelligible rather than transparently dishonest. These convergences do not individually prove ancient authorship, but collectively they constitute evidence that LDS Discussions does not address.

Claim 5: Joseph Smith Falsely Claimed Linguistic Expertise

LDS Discussions effectively demonstrates that Joseph Smith made public claims to linguistic facility—quoting what he claimed were phrases in Egyptian, Hebrew, German, and other languages—and that these claims were false. This is a real problem for a naive reading of Joseph's prophetic claims, and LDS Discussions is right that FAIR's video assertion that "Joseph claimed no expertise in any language" is historically indefensible. The documented quotes from Joseph's Times and Seasons editorship, the King Follett Discourse, and the Kirtland-era writings show a man who believed himself conversant with ancient languages in ways that Egyptology and linguistics have since refuted.

What LDS Discussions fails to reckon with is the broader pattern of prophetic literature. The criterion "the prophet's linguistic claims must be consistent with modern academic standards" would disqualify most of the Hebrew Bible on the same grounds. The more defensible theological position is this: Joseph Smith genuinely believed he could understand ancient languages through spiritual gifts, and he was wrong about the scope and character of that gift. This does not mean that nothing he produced through that process was revealed; it means his self-understanding of the mechanism was imperfect—consistent with how multiple religious traditions understand inspired composition: the prophet receives a genuine message but expresses it through the imperfect medium of his own understanding and culture.

Claim 6: “Written by His Own Hand” Proves Direct Translation

LDS Discussions argues that the Book of Abraham's introduction—“a translation of some ancient records...purporting to be the writings of Abraham while he was in Egypt, called The Book of Abraham, Written by his Own Hand, upon Papyrus”—commits Joseph Smith to claiming the papyrus in hand was literally written by Abraham. This argument is philologically weak. The word purporting in the 1842 Times and Seasons introduction is not an endorsement of the claim; it is a description of what the records claim about themselves. The phrase signals acknowledgment that the text presents itself as Abrahamic, not an affirmation that it is literally in Abraham's handwriting.

Furthermore, "written by his own hand" was a standard Egyptian scribal convention for asserting the authority of a text, not a claim of literal autography. Egyptian texts routinely attributed authorship to ancient figures (Thoth, Imhotep, various pharaohs) when they were in fact produced centuries later by scribal traditions claiming that lineage. John Gee has documented this convention extensively in the Egyptian pseudepigraphical literature. That Joseph employed similar language—whether by revelation or cultural osmosis from contact with Egyptian textual tradition—is therefore consistent with authentic ancient scribal practice rather than a modern fabrication.

Claim 7: The Kevin Mathie Attack Reveals FAIR's Dishonesty

LDS Discussions correctly identifies FAIR Mormon's personal attack on Kevin Mathie as dishonest and deflective. Mathie, a composer and not a credentialed Egyptologist, produced infographics that accurately cited and summarized the work of leading Egyptologists—primarily Dr. Ritner. FAIR's response, which focused on Mathie's lack of credentials while never engaging Ritner's actual conclusions, was an ad hominem designed to avoid the substantive translation comparison. This criticism of FAIR's video is entirely valid.

However, LDS Discussions uses this valid criticism to smuggle in an unwarranted conclusion: that because FAIR refused to engage Ritner's translations, those translations are therefore decisive. They are significant and must be taken seriously, but they do not operate in a scholarly vacuum. Egyptologists John Gee and Kerry Muhlestein have engaged Ritner's arguments directly in peer-reviewed settings, disputing both specific translational choices and the broader hermeneutical framework Ritner employs. LDS Discussions' presentation of Ritner as the uncontested voice of Egyptological consensus is itself a form of the selective citation it accuses FAIR of practicing.

The Methodological Double Standard

The most fundamental problem with LDS Discussions' analysis is methodological. It consistently applies an asymmetric standard of evidence: when John Gee describes the Olishem connection as "promising but not proven," LDS Discussions treats this as a fatal concession that destroys the parallel. But when Ritner identifies the Facsimile 1 figure as Anubis, LDS Discussions treats this as "proven," ignoring the substantial scholarly literature on the variability of Egyptian visual conventions and the documented complexity of lion-couch scenes across Egyptian and Near Eastern contexts.

A fair application of the same standard would acknowledge: (1) Egyptologists disagree about specific facsimile interpretations; (2) the relationship between the extant papyri and the Book of Abraham text is genuinely unresolved in the scholarly literature; (3) the cosmological and covenantal structures of the Book of Abraham have genuine ancient parallels that no 19th-century source adequately explains; and (4) the revelatory model of translation, far from being a desperate post-hoc rationalization, is consistent with how Joseph Smith described his other revelatory productions throughout his life.

Where FAIR Mormon Fell Short—and What the Better Response Looks Like

LDS Discussions identifies real failures in FAIR's video presentation. Attacking Kevin Mathie personally while refusing to engage the Egyptologists he cited was dishonest. Claiming "this is not true" about the papyri-manuscript connection while photographic evidence clearly demonstrates that connection was indefensible. Presenting the Olishem and Shinehah parallels as "bullseyes" when even their leading proponents acknowledge limitations was misleading. These are legitimate criticisms, and the apologetic community should hold itself to a higher standard.

The better apologetic response to the Book of Abraham challenge—exemplified in works by John Gee, Kerry Muhlestein, Stephen Smoot, Michael Rhodes, Hugh Nibley, and the Interpreter Foundation—openly acknowledges the genuine difficulties: the facsimile identifications differ significantly from Egyptological consensus; the relationship between the extant papyri and the Book of Abraham text is unresolved; and the "written by his own hand" language requires careful interpretation. Having made those concessions honestly, it then makes the positive case: the text's ancient covenantal structure, its geocentric cosmology, its consistent ancient Near Eastern cultural context, its genuine Egyptian linguistic parallels, and its documentary resonance with pseudepigraphical literature constitute a body of evidence that a 19th-century fraud would not plausibly have produced.

Conclusion

The LDS Discussions critique of FAIR Mormon's Book of Abraham video is most effective as media criticism: the video was poorly argued, rhetorically aggressive, and in some instances factually evasive. These criticisms land, and they are conceded. As a refutation of the underlying scholarly case for the Book of Abraham, however, LDS Discussions' article fails. It relies on selective citation of critics while suppressing the strongest defenses; it conflates "FAIR's video was bad" with "the apologetic case is closed"; it applies asymmetric standards of evidence; and it presents genuinely contested historical and archaeological questions as settled matters of fact.

The Book of Abraham challenge is real. The facsimile problem is real. The Kirtland Egyptian Papers problem is real. Faithful Latter-day Saints are not well-served by apologists who pretend otherwise. But they are equally ill-served by critics who present those problems as a closed case when the peer-reviewed scholarly literature says otherwise. The truth, as best we can determine it, lies in the difficult middle: a complex historical situation that neither side has fully resolved, and a document that continues to reward serious scholarly attention from both believing and skeptical readers.

Honest inquiry demands that we follow the evidence without predetermining the conclusion. LDS Discussions calls for this from FAIR Mormon. We call for it, in equal measure, from LDS Discussions.

Key Sources and Further Reading

John Gee, An Introduction to the Book of Abraham (University of Illinois Press / Religious Studies Center, 2017)

John Gee, “Pressing Forward with the Book of Abraham,” Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship (2019)

Kerry Muhlestein, “Egyptian Ritual Killing,” Journal of the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities 34 (2007): 159–176

Hugh Nibley, The Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri: An Egyptian Endowment, 2nd ed. (FARMS/Deseret Book, 2005)

Richard L. Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (Knopf, 2005)

Brian M. Hauglid, A Textual History of the Book of Abraham: Manuscripts and Editions (Neal A. Maxwell Institute, 2010)

Michael D. Rhodes, “The Joseph Smith Hypocephalus… Seventeen Years Later,” FARMS Preliminary Report (1994)

Stephen O. Smoot, John Gee, Kerry Muhlestein, and John S. Thompson, A Guide to the Book of Abraham, BYU Studies Quarterly 61/4 (2022)

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Gospel Topics Essay: Translation and Historicity of the Book of Abraham (2014) — churchofjesuschrist.org

FAIR Latter-day Saints, Detailed Response to CES Letter: Book of Abraham — fairlatterdaysaints.org

LDS Discussions, “A Look at FAIR Mormon's 'Book of Abraham vs CES Letter' Video” (source being responded to) — ldsdiscussions.com/fair-abraham