Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture just published a new essay on their Website:
Mark J. Johnson, Scriptures with Pictures: Methodology, Unexamined Assumptions, and the Study of the Book of Abraham (pdf)
Johnson has an interesting analysis of the so-called "Book of Joseph":
The Book of Joseph: In addition to the Book of Abraham, many of the saints believed the rest of the scrolls contained other accounts of the patriarchs. If one scroll had the writings of Abraham, it would be only natural for the other scrolls to be a record of Joseph, the other patriarch who had ties to Egypt. The writings of Joseph of Egypt were, from an early date, believed to be contained in the scrolls.144 Once the Saints decided the other roll was the Book of Joseph, they began the task of assigning biblical meanings to the vignettes. Eve tempted by the serpent was seen in the vignettes as was Enoch’s Pillar.
The early saints can hardly be blamed for their overzealous interpretation. The Lord was revealing truths at an incredible rate through revelation and through ancient writings. With the Book of Mormon and its accompanying artifacts, it is easy to see that the cache found with the writings of Abraham would also belong to a sort of treasure trove of the biblical patriarchs.
This mindset is clear in the statement of Parley P. Pratt:
The record is now in course of translation by means of the Urim and Thummim, and proves to be a record written partly by the father of the faithful, Abraham, and finished by Joseph when in Egypt. After his death, it is supposed they were preserved in the family of the Pharaohs and afterwards hid up with the embalmed body of the female with whom they were found.145
Pratt strives to present a plausible solution for how the records could have been preserved in the catacombs of Egypt. However, once the discipline of Egyptology started to gain steam, his theory has shown to be impossible regarding these particular scrolls.
Pratt also presents the interesting idea that there may not have been a separate Book of Joseph but rather that Joseph finished the record of his great-grandfather. If there is any truth to the existence of the writings of Joseph being present in the collection of the scrolls, this scenario seems most likely. However, this idea may have been borrowed from the Book of Mormon narrative, with Moroni finishing the story of his father Mormon. Pratt’s testimony stands in contrast to the statements of other witnesses, for example Oliver Cowdery and Albert Brown, who stated that the writings of Joseph were on a separate scroll.
One recent study has attempted to collect all the pertinent information on the lost writings of Joseph of Egypt.146 To the author’s credit, he makes his assumptions transparent within the paper. However, whenever the evidence is ambiguous, he chooses to interpret the evidence in favor of his thesis. The witness statements cited are given the maximum benefit of the doubt based on each of the witness’s proximity to Joseph Smith. Nor does the author acknowledge the possibility that Joseph Smith was mistaken about the contents of the rest of the scrolls.
As an additional limitation it needs to be remembered that many of the Prophet Joseph Smith’s journal entries were added after the fact by his scribes. Indeed, many of these journal entries were included years later, after they actually happened. It needs to be acknowledged that the secretaries employed by the Prophet had the opportunity to interject their own views. For example, the first journal entry mentioning the writings of Joseph was given the dates of 6‒8 July 1835, but it wasn’t originally written by Joseph Smith; rather it was likely inserted into the church history manuscripts by W. W. Phelps in 1843.
This author, as well as H. Donl Peterson before him, takes note of a lengthy description of Joseph of Egypt’s scroll by Oliver Cowdery. They both note that Cowdery describes “the Godhead, the creation, the fall of Adam and Eve, Satan in the Garden of Eden, and other temple related themes.”147 Of course, other scholars have noted that these biblical themes appear to be based on the vignettes of the Tshemmin scroll. The author acknowledges these parallels in the footnotes but puts forward the familiar idea that the location of the vignettes need not appear next to the text they supplement. The author cites Malcom Mosher: “[In] documents from the 21st Dynasty on, misalignment of the text and vignette of a spell can occur, with the text preceding the vignette, or vice versa.”148 This implies that the writing of Joseph could have been elsewhere on the Tshemmin scroll, in the same manner as the Book of Abraham coexists on the Horos scroll with the Book of Breathings. This is a creative theory, one worthy of further research.
However, I find two difficulties with this theory. First, while some vignettes may not be aligned with their respective texts, this doesn’t appear to be the case with the Tshemmin Book of the Dead; the vignettes appear next to their respective chapters. The vignette of the deceased sitting before three seated deities (which is described by Cowdery as the Godhead) is next to a chapter titled “A chapter for sitting among the great gods.”149 Cowdery’s description of the Eve and the serpent vignette is next to a chapter that allows the deceased to walk the earth.150 The Pillar of Enoch that Cowdery describes is a hieroglyphic sign for Heliopolis. The chapter next to this vignette describes the deceased entering Heliopolis.151 Muhlestein notes that these descriptions as understood by Egyptologists are different from those given by Cowdery and other witnesses.152 This is, of course, to be expected. The significance of these witness statements is not that they are different from those of Egyptologists but rather that these witnesses believed they were seeing scrolls and pictures associated with biblical accounts.
Second, while Horos could have been inclined to include the Book of Abraham on the interior of his scroll, we have no indication that Tshemmin had the same proclivities. And while it is possible that writings of Joseph could exist on the interior of the Tshemmin scroll, there could have been another Book of Breathings, another text entirely, or no text at all.
Following the mindset of the early Latter-day Saints, it seems likely that the Book of Joseph was invented because of the large number of scrolls in the collection. Since the collection had a perceived connection to Biblical world, it only became natural that the Book of the Dead of Tshemmin was seen as the Book of Joseph and that the curious vignettes it contained were representative of Biblical scenes, even if all of these scenes were not understood.
Notes for the Above
144. Muhlestein, ”Joseph Smith’s Biblical View of Egypt,” 452.
145. Parley P. Pratt, “Editorial Remarks,” Millennial Star 3/3 (July 1842): 47.
146. Quinten Barney, “The Joseph Smith Papyri and the Writings of Joseph of Egypt” Journal of Mormon History, Vol. 42, No. 2 (April 2016), 95‒109.
147. Barney, “The Joseph Smith Papyri and the Writings of Joseph of Egypt,” 103‒04. See also Peterson, The Story of the Book of Abraham, 130.
148. Barney, “The Joseph Smith Papyri and the Writings of Joseph of Egypt,” 103, footnote 19.
149. Michael Dennis Rhodes, Books of the Dead Belonging to Tshemmin and Neferirnub: A Translation and Commentary (Provo, UT: Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, 2010), 54.
150. Michael Dennis Rhodes, Books of the Dead, 43.
151. Michael Dennis Rhodes, Books of the Dead, 44.
152. Muhlestein, “Joseph Smith and Egyptian Artifacts,” 53‒60.
