In early 1842, about the same time Joseph Smith wrote his letter to John
Wentworth, he was also busily engaged in “translating from the Records of
Abraham.”
These records had been acquired in 1835 when the Church
purchased several rolls of ancient Egyptian papyrus from Michael
Chandler. Joseph and his scribes did some preliminary investigation of
them, but labor on the Kirtland Temple and the subsequent apostasy and
persecution precluded any opportunity for him to continue this work in
Ohio or Missouri. Finally in the spring of 1842 he was able to dedicate
himself to the task for several weeks with few interruptions.
Elder Wilford Woodruff, who learned in leadership councils of the
Prophet’s translation and some of its contents, recorded in his journal his
feelings about the Prophet’s work: “Truly the Lord has raised up Joseph the
Seer . . . and is now clothing him with mighty power and wisdom and
knowledge. . . . The Lord is blessing Joseph with power to reveal the
mysteries of the kingdom of God; to translate through the Urim and
Thummim ancient records and Hieroglyphics as old as Abraham or Adam,
which causes our hearts to burn within us while we behold their glorious
truths opened unto us.”
Extracts from the book of Abraham appeared first in the Times and
Seasons and in the Millennial Star in the summer of 1842. Joseph Smith
indicated that more would be forthcoming, but he was unable to continue
the translation after 1842. What the Church received—five chapters of the
book of Abraham in the Pearl of Great Price—is only a portion of
the original record.
In 1967 eleven fragments of the Joseph Smith papyri were rediscovered
by Doctor Aziz S. Atiya, in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Studies of them have confirmed that they are mainly ancient Egyptian
funerary texts of the sort commonly buried with royalty and nobility and
designed to guide them through their eternal journeyings.
This has renewed the question about the connection between the records and the
book of Abraham. Joseph Smith did not explain the method of translating
the book of Abraham, just as he did not explain fully how the Book of
Mormon was translated. Nevertheless, like the Book of Mormon, the book
of Abraham is its own evidence that it came about through the gift
and power of God.
On the one hand, they quote Woodruff as saying Joseph could translate the hieroglyphics, and then they tell us that the hieroglyphics are nothing of the sort. And the last line is priceless, almost a resigned whimper that the text is "its own evidence."