How Can I Know Whether The Book of Abraham Is True?

No matter whether I write in 2012 or in 2120, I'm happy to attribute any new discoveries about the scriptures to those who came before me or who saw more deeply, and especially to parents and latter-day apostles and to Dr. Hugh Nibley who taught well and "without compulsory means." 


The idea Brother Nibley put forward was that of the second look. When speaking of scholarly evidence for the scriptures, he would pick up a marker and draw a long line across the classroom board in the stately Karl G. Maeser building. Everyone, he explained, finds conviction, proof, meaning somewhere down the accumulative evidentiary line of scholarship. He would add vertical marks down the line to so illustrate. Conviction comes from hearing, proof from looking--and from looking again.

What of the conviction of the Spirit? As we read the Book of Abraham we touch the heavens; scholarship also opens our hearts to conviction. Latter-day Saint readers, brim with spiritual testimony of the Book of Mormon, received that witness after asking "with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ" whether the record of the Nephites, both detailed and sweepingly breathtaking--in a word, overwhelming--was "not [indeed] true"? We pray for manifestation following conviction. 


Already secure in the witness of the Book of Mormon, as translated by a latter-day Prophet, how shall Latter-day Saints now approach other books or other prophets? Shall we test the Lord? seek our own Waters of Meribah? Can we pretend, in teenager fashion, that prophecy bow "by common consent" or in accord with "times and seasons"? Ought we to claim a Book of Mormon of 531 pages, then turn around and doubt fourteen-page Abraham? and that doubt follow an untutored glance at a couple fragmentary columns of papyrus? I remember the old saw about reinventing the wheel and ask: Shall Thomas S. Monson "stand alone" as we profess to testify of Joseph Smith? Can the sun be blotted out by man or the law of chastity revoked by the "children of disobedience"? Do we glory in the cloudburst of revealed doctrine only to pretend to no settled doctrine at all? Or do we need to "remember"? "and ponder it in your hearts"? "Ye shall receive these things." "It is wisdom in the Lord" (see Moroni 10: 3-5). 


What a gentle reminder: "How Gentle God's Commands; How Kind His Precepts Are."

Any reader of Hugh Nibley's writings on the Book of Abraham should take note of one thing: A witness of the book's truthfulness can most certainly be found by comparing its contents to the records of the ancient near east and, in further abundance, to the works of modern egyptological and near eastern scholarship. Try it. "Prove all things"; bend the mind; "Stand independent above all other creatures beneath the celestial world" in your search for truth (Doctrine and Covenants 78:14). We need not wait for the confirmation of the Spirit of the Lord in order to bear powerful testimony of the Book of Abraham. Such confirmation attends witness, follows witness.

Brother Nibley shows us a veritable cloud of witnesses to the truthfulness of Abraham's record (read the conclusion to Abraham in Egypt again). To brush aside or to ignore such multitudinous testimony comes at a risk. If we cannot understand temporal things when they are as plain as word can be, how can we think to receive further enlightenment from the Holy Spirit? The Lord's house is a house of logic. Or does the Lord gives us teachers to no point? Does He grant his gifts of teaching the word of wisdom and of teaching the word of knowledge in vain? Are not such gifts intended to edify the whole body? And if so, what would the implications be for Latter-day Saints, learned or unlearned, who receive not the gift? Or what the receptivity for other books of prophecy soon to come forth?

I note of late a faddish scepticism about the Book of Abraham. I meet such intellectual posing, such prompt dismissal with wonder.

Kolob in Color (Book of Abraham Facsimile 2)

"In what distant deeps or skies/ Burnt the fire of thine eyes?"

The color of Kolob--Kolob in Color 

(through the lens of the parti-color hypocephalus Turin 2333)


The central figure on the round hypocephalus (Book of Abraham Facsimile 2) represents Kolob, "the first creation," as Abraham, looking through bright gems, Urim and Thummim, saw in a vision of the stars. Students call the same ram-headed figure the "ram of Mendes," after its archaic place of worship in the green Delta. The Egyptians knew him as Ba-neb-Djedit (the ba-Ram or ba-spirit of the Lord of Djedit, or Mendes). As the multi-millennial Egyptian religious tradition flows through the land, like the Nile adding fertile silt in its seasons, high, kingly gods accumulate attributes belonging to various other divinities, divinities that often belong to deeply ancient traditions and ritual settings. The high god Amun (whose name means the hidden one) thus adds majesty and honor to his name by identifying with, or appropriating the symbolism and rites of the Mendesian ram (as had Osiris also done before him). (See Ian Shaw and Paul Nicholson, eds., The Dictionary of Ancient Egypt, "Mendes," 181.)

The ram of Mendes appears on the hypocephalus (and in certain other texts) as having four heads added onto one neck (Turin 2333 shows two heads). Yet, says Erik Hornung: "No thinking Egyptian would have imagined that the true form of hidden Amun was a man with a ram's head"--much less four. The heads represent the four manifest powers, energies, spirits--what the Egyptians, in their late period, come to know as the four ba's--of the Cosmic Deity. 


For the Ancient Egyptians words that sound alike resound with power. Such words map creation and discover its hidden fountains. Not only do the words for ba-ram and ba-spirit (also living stars) combine semiotic forces, another word for ram, zr/zjw, aspires to sjw, the word for star (Sederholm, Papyrus British Museum 10808, 155). This makes sense because both rams and stars bespeak Life fruitful in multiplicity. Life teems or it is no Life. Such names and their accompanying images become "signs in a metalanguage," even "hieroglyphs" that both hide and reveal (Erik Hornung, Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt, 124). Everything painted on Facsimile 2, though merely sketched in black ink (was there color also? we don't know), manifests sign, metalanguage, cryptogram. Such "writings" "cannot be revealed to the world," only to the "thinking Egyptian." For reflective Joseph the hieroglyphs masked like rams represent great, governing stars (see Explanation, Facsimile 2). The Mendesian ram, in manifest power, mirrors the rising sun, but certainly represents something more than simply the Sun god, Re. The same holds true for any god: "The true form is 'hidden' and 'mysterious'"; "none can encompass the full richness of his nature" (Hornung, Conceptions of God, 124-25; Jan Assmann says manifest Re himself "ist immer mehr" than just the Sun). 


There is nothing static about the Egyptian Sun anyhow. Re, descending from above and masked like a ram, unites with mummified Osiris, ruler of the netherworld. "Re is celestial, puissant, energetic; Osiris, chthonic, static, dead" (Sederholm, Papyrus 10808, 171). 


Facsimile 2 hides, in the lower panel, a cryptogram, or encoded name: Lotus Leaf-Lion-Ram (Sarpot--M3wj--Srj. There are various ways to decode the secret name. Read acrophonically (that is, by isolating the first letters of each word, then combining them into a new word)--s-m-s--the cryptogram yields: 1) the Eldest (that is, the Originator or Creator); 2) the One who continually brings about birth or creation. Book of the Dead Chapter 162, which refers to the hypocephalus, treats the meeting of Re and Osiris as grand mystery veiled in secret names: "Truly he [Re] is the Ba of the Great Corpse [Osiris] at rest in Heliopolis. Lotus-Lion-Ram is his name. 3x-xpr-j3w is also his name" (see Ibid., 149; for these cryptograms: Marie-Louise Ryhiner, "A propos de les trigrammes pantheistes," RdE (29) 1977, 125-37; Sederholm, 10808, 146 n 6, 146, 149, 162 n 78; 168-9). Other hypocephali sometimes add to the cryptogram Lotus-Lion-Ram three more mysterious symbols of transfiguration, symbols which I read as another known cryptogram, a sort of combination of the two just cited: zr-3x-xpr (literally, or logographically: the Ram, or Ba becomes a glorious Akh; acrophonically, z/s3x, to be made glorious, become an Akh-spirit, or "glorified being"; see Sederholm, 10808, 169). Such cryptograms, or signs "in a metalanguage," name the unspeakable moment of renewal in the netherworld. 


The fresh lotus leaf, "standing out of the water and in the water"--as Peter describes the earth at creation--signals renewing blossom. Sunburst follows. The lion (m3wj), stronger than death, names renewal (m3w). And the ram, by its nature, becomes the image of fruitfulness, a transformation into many shapes-and thus also newness of life--what the Egyptians call xprw. Because the cryptogram, when read acrophonically, makes up a palindrome, and indeed it often appears accompanied by the tag Tz-pHr (and vice-versa), we cannot help but read it as sign of continual rebirth and renewal: The Lotus renews (sm3j) the Ram; The Ram renews the Lotus. First and Last intertwine, interchange for the Eldest Star that lights all other stars. Thus Kolob stands: "First in government, the last pertaining to the measurement of time." Pharaoh reigns "First in government" in Egypt: "I am the Pharaoh Lion-ram; Ram-lion-lotus is my name" (Griffith and Thompson, Demotic Magical Papyrus, 22f.; Col. I 12). The palindrome describes the sun "in its revolution," which revolution unfolds as the key to the "measurement of time." And just what should the periodicity of the Lotus revolution be? (See Explanation for Facsimile 2.) 


The cryptogram also keeps life's secret. Hugh Nibley often refers to Salt Papyrus 825. This book of ceremonies reenacting the union of Re (srp.t, "lotus leaf" ~ sr p.t "prince of heaven"?) and Osiris (wsjr ~ zr, "ram" or sr, "prince"), clothed in like cryptograms and describing the same doctrine of the ram, decrees swift death to whomsoever divulges the matter outside the foursquare ritual center known as the House of Life. The cryptographic signature of life on the hypocephalus thus stamps that circular document as also belonging to the Temple of God and its secret protocols. Facsimile 2, line 8, which not only lies exactly above our cryptogram but also records the all-powerful ritual prayer that brings about the resurrection of Osirian corpse as living ba, "Contains," says Joseph Smith, "writings that cannot be revealed to the world; but is to be had in the Holy Temple of God" (Explanation, Facsimile 2). In that house the manifest proceeds from the hidden. The union of Re and Osiris, or Lotus-Lion-Ram, as the radiant Cosmic Deity, the Transcendent Amun, or, even, the Amun within the Iris (hidden in blinding light and cryptic pupil), produces the fourfold energy that extends to the farthest regions of day, reaches the edges of the existent.

The manifest energy and power of the Transcendent Amun, though himself hidden, the Egyptians call the ba (or ba-spirit). The several texts name each of the four ba's of the Mendesian Ram--and, here, color meets number (the evidence may be reviewed in A. Egbert's, In Quest of Meaning, 163-65). The following names, colors, signs, numbers occur variously: the red ba, the green ba, the ba of Shu, the ba of Khepri, the ba of Shepsi (or the "august ba"), the white ba, and the bright ba. Such are the designations "assigned to Re, Osiris, Shu [manifest as the bright atmosphere], and Khepri [Re at rising]" (164), but the list ever changes, the colors run. We also find the August ba of Re, the Green (Blue?) Ba of Shu, the red ba of Geb, the bright ba of Osiris (ba Sps nj r', b3 w3D nj Sw, b3 dSr nj gb, b3 b3q nj wsjr [b3q ~ Semitic brq? = "lightening"; "transcendent"; brilliant?], 163).

The contrast of green and red is a topos in Egyptian literature and speaks to freshness versus corruption and prosperity versus bad luck. Both run in tandem: "certain [amuletic] drawings of the [wedjat-eye, must therefore] take a drop of red ink at the corner of the eye. Just enough red can bring good luck and strengthen the green; too much, and it becomes a consuming fire, out of control and making 'the green one red.' " (Sederholm, 10808, 197; cf. 196ff.). Danger finds resolution, refreshment in green: "A repeated formula [of blood sacrifice] in the Coffin Texts (IV 316c; 328i; V257g) reads:

nb dSr.w
w3D nm.wt

Lord of bloods,
Refresher of altars.

The [chiastic] linking of dSr and w3D is especially powerful here, because w3D fits so well the imagery of the shedding of fresh, bright blood. Both the god and the blood is 'Refresher of altars' " (Ibid, 197 n. 37). The nmj altar (a pun on nb) is in fact the very altar upon which the priest of Pharaoh attempted Abraham's life; in a nice reversal the mysteries of the green stars were "revealed from God to Abraham, as he [in his turn] offered sacrifice upon an altar" (Joseph Smith, Explanation of Facsimile 2, Oliblish). Green stars? Refresher of altars? Consider how a lotus stand appears to contrast at the head of the blood-stained altar in Facsimile 1. And what about the same stand shown gracing the star, Oliblish (another Mendesian ram) on Facsimile 2? The plumes crowning the star burst into HD-white, as if the white (or sky blue) flower from the green lotus stalk. Oliblish in color. 


Leaf, stalk, flower--they spring up everywhere--Abraham's hypocephalus comes drenched in the lotus. In the case of Oliblish, besides a sign of greening--lotus stand and sprinklers--the water lily likely designates that star's governing power over all he surveys. It is a shared dominion. There can be no conflict of power or interest amid the harmony of the spheres. The lotus sweetly marks delegated power "by politeness of the king": "Stands next to Kolob"; "the next grand governing creation"; "holding the keys of power also" [explained by Nibley as the wepwawet, or "opener of paths" jackal standard that the figure holds] (Joseph Smith, Explanation, no. 2). Such a reading well accords with Hugh Nibley's summary of the lotus symbolism, "The All-purpose Lotus" (Abraham in Egypt). And doubtless Brother Nibley would also see the lotus as a sign of the cycle, the revolution: Oliblish, the walking-staff wanderer, opener of paths, dusty pioneer, comes at last to the refreshment of the lotus. One Eternal Round bespeaks anapausis, refrigerium: the rest of the Lord.

Professor Egbert labors to put order into the lists and explain their development: which color fits which ba or god? and when and why? and which list makes for canon? But this is lotus Egypt, a place where definition resists a reining in or tidying up. Both the red ba and the green can refer to just Re or to Re and Osiris, respectively--and so on. Again, are Nile red and green really red and green? or are they rellow and gruen? Is the sun of Egypt red or yellow? Does green color a blue sky? or the freshness of renewed growth? 

Hypocephalus Turin 2333 sports both red and green paint: Kolob is red, his attendant stars, green baboons (with red faces). Hovering above their arms of praise, come the four fresh offerings of lotus flowers and flowering papyrus stalks--two a-piece and blending into the sky. The colorful burdens befit morning and the refreshing flood. Things come round: by morning, by season, in turn. The Prophet's ideas about the hypocephalus mapping four directions and reckoning celestial revolutions bring fullness to the scene. For the Prophet, morning in Kolob blossoms once but a thousand of our own years; and, according to the lists of values for late period hieroglyphs, all such stalks and flowers, their ordinary, dictionary reading turned to subtle connotation, can also be read x3 (F. Daumas, ed., Valeurs phonetiques des signes hieroglyphiques d'epoch greco-romaine). That last word, which itself traditionally takes the sign of a lotus stalk in leaf, signifies "a thousand." One thousand--the anticipation, the renewal of Kolob--comes in green paint.


"Anointing makes 'green,' " says Hugh Nibley; green nurtures, strengthens, bestows magical powers from above (Hugh Nibley, The Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri, 122f. [2nd ed., 198ff.], citing Budge, Book of Opening the Mouth, 1:232, 234). Elsewhere in the Egyptian record, Amenhotep II, depicted as if a child, suckles a cow "smattered with green markings that look for all the world like stars" (Sederholm, Papyrus British Museum 10808, 165; Patrick Houlihan, Animal World, 104, plate XIX). In light of Turin 233 we again note the lotuses gracing Oliblish and the solar bark in upper panels 2 and 3 of the Abraham hypocephalus. And without a green sun, could the earth herself be greened? Hugh Nibley has much to say about "the correspondences between green plants and green stones, and the use of green faience 'in the rites of the newborn sun' " (Sederholm, Papyrus British Museum 10808, 166 n. 90, quoting Hugh Nibley, The Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri, 122f.; lotuses: One Eternal Round, 285). It was shortly after rising "that the red carnelian eye (the sun low on the horizon) turned into the green faience eye. . . the greening of the landscape after the redness of dawn" (Nibley, Message, 122f.; cf. red Kolob rising as green Oliblish). The amulet of the w3D, gracing the neck, bespeaks a thousand years "as a symbol of verdure and eternal youth" (Ibid., citing BD 159, in Barguet, Livre des Morts, 226 and n. 1). The newborn sun sprouts like a papyrus stalk (w3D)--the quintessence of all that is fresh and green; it sets, elderly, in bloods (dSrw).

The first settlers of Mendes, the Delta home of the Ram who became both Re and Osiris, called the place 'Anepat (Place of Greenness); for "Green pastures and meadows stretched to the west and south" (Donald B. Redford, City of the Ram-Man: The Story of Ancient Mendes [Princeton, 2010], 2). (Any reader of Rhodes's and Nibley's One Eternal Round will recall the importance of green and the symbolism of green gems in the story of the hypocephalus.) The Mendesian ram itself was white, and, according to the third century BC Mendes Stela, the local inhabitants first discovered the white ram in the verdant western meadows at the First Time (see D. Redford, City of the Ram-Man). The contrast of brilliant greens and whites strikes the imagination, these also being "the canonical colors of the Egyptian temple" (Hugh Nibley, The Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri: An Egyptian Endowment). Green famously is the color of Osiris, while white not only speaks dawn (Eg. HDj and HDj.t) but also suggests, at least to Newtonians, that totality of universal color and ineffable beauty locked in the iris, and thus in the pupil-and-iris imagery of the Transcendent Hidden Amun who hides in his wedjat-eye, imagery best expressed by the shape and symbolism of the hypocephalus (see David Klotz, Adoration of the Ram, 168-9).

Contrast colors Kolob. And we recall again the bracing red and cold green that yet appear on a hypocephalus housed in Turin's Egyptian museum: red circles encompassing red circles, red Kolob and red disks of the sun, green apes, red-faced (best shown in a photograph by Art Pollard, on Flikr. Art's an old college chum, by the way). Now, though, I hear Hugh Nibley pointedly reminding me that the hypocephalus presents anything but artistic merit--the work shows no skill--and this is a needful reminder lest we lose sight of the grand idea Kolob represents. The hypocephalus meets interpretation as a figural sweep of Idea.


Yet any hypocephalus, dightly painted or not, comes a-splash in color. It's a child's play. Plants and animals of every possible form, lions, bulls, ewes, rams (white of horn), hawks, jackals, snakes, populate these disks. Like the wilds in the visions of Job or the chambers of seasons in the Old Kingdom sun temple of Niuserre, the circle of the hypocephalus teems with life. Wings spread and fold everywhere, and, in Egypt, the wings of hawks find description as brilliant, parti-color mirrors--a stained glass. Consider the lilies: the lotus (presented by the Lady of the green, gem-like wedjat-eye to the red cow) we must see as blossoming in blue or white. We find reds and greens shot through with light, split with blinding HDj, and yet for all their translucence, there is no washing out: green grows greener, red turns to blood.

Although the Hathor cow on Turin 2333 shows no color, by nature--and by solar nature--red she must be. (Hathor embodies the divine feminine, both mother and companion of Re.) Indeed I read red everywhere in the name Joseph Smith gives the cow. Enish-go-on-dosh, to me, blends jns.t-red with dSr.t-red, dosh-red, in just this fashion:

The Exalted Scarlet Solar Eye/
even the Beautiful One (or Beautiful Eye)
in its Redness (or in its quality as the Red Eye)
jns.t q3.t/'n.t dS(r) = Anis-qo-on-dosh = The Red Eye-Exalted-the Beautiful (Eye)-the Red One

Alongside my guess for elaborated Enish-go-on-dosh, which recalls red Mars as Hor-dosh, we can put the following name for the Female Sun, as revealed in an obscure version of Book of the Dead Chapter 148:

She great of love, red of hair;/
oh foremost one residing in the mansion of the red one, beautiful rudder of the southern sky,/
she who is united with life, she of the red cloth.
(John C. Darnell, The Enigmatic Books of the Solar-Osirian Unity: Cryptographic Compositions in the Tombs of Tutankamun, Ramesses VI, and Ramesses IX, dissertation, 105).

The phrase Hnm.t-'nx jnsj.t (she is united with life, even she, the red one) plays on the words 'nx/'nsh (life) and jnsj.t (the lady of scarlet, or "she of the red cloth"). (Hathor often flows from the brush in a wine red dress.) To unite with life is here to unite with the sun on the red horizon, or "mansion of the red one" (the hw.t dshrw: dosh). Red (jnsj) thus answers to life ('nx). Because the Woerterbuch (I, 100.14) defines jnsj.t as a name of the Eye of Horus (the color word jnsj comes from a bright red (scarlet) linen called jnsj), we are fully justified in drawing a a like correlation between the feminine forms jnsj.t and 'nx.t as names for the Female Solar Eye in our Enish-go-on-dosh, another possible reading of the first two elements of which is: "The Exalted (q3j) Living Eye ('nx.t)." (cf. Woerterbuch I, 100; on scarlet and other Egyptian colors, see also Bernard Mathieu, "Les couleurs dans les Textes des Pyramides").


These names--brim though they be with mirrorings and metonymy--do not quite match our own idea of beauty until we recognize that the solar red is anything but a red barn: it is a resplendent tide that flames like a ruby. Here is a precious "living stone," as well as "living Eye," a translucent diadem among stars (see 1 Peter 2:4-5). (The chapter to read on the tie linking hypocephalus and rubies, sapphires, and emeralds is Hugh Nibley and Michael Rhodes, "The Jewel of Discernment," One Eternal Round, Chapter 10, 423-462.)

The Egyptians brought much poetry together into compact cryptonyms (hidden names), and I favor the idea of the elements enish and dosh as radiating both life ('nx.t, anesh) and redness, both beauty and the (red) borders (or border stones = the dS.w). After all, the epithet "red (or yellow) of hair" (lit. "red of that curled round" = dSr.t shnj) clearly plays on the idea of the "red circuit" or "red eternal round" of the sun (circuit, Sn.t). Redness, Beauty, Life, the Eye of Horus: all is one--and one eternal round. The exalted female sun, the Eye, as she navigates from the southern borders to the north, is both vibrantly and gloriously beautiful--both sun by day and flaming Arcturus by night.

The piercing jewel set in Hathor's crown shows the rubied sun itself, ensconced, as it is, between the rounded borders (or bows) of her two horns (cf. Joseph Smith--History 1:35: the Urim set in two rims of a bow). The correlation of Eye and Stone (and Crown), by the way, comes to perfection in the hypocephalus design: If the "hypocephalus itself," as Nibley says, is "a giant eye" (318), then it is also a fiery solar stone. The object, like a round sea of glass and fire, like crystal, can therefore serve its purpose "to spark a flame under the head of a radiant spirit" (Book of the Dead Chapter 162; Doctrine and Covenants 130; Doctrine and Covenants 88:11 = the two eyes, which capture both the visible as also intellectual light). "And I, Abraham," as we are taught many times over in One Eternal Round, "had the Urim and Thummim, which the Lord my God had given unto me, in Ur of the Chaldees [And I, Abraham, had the hypocephalus: it is not given to us this Urim and Thummim, but we do have Abraham's hypocephalus and Abraham's matchless stars!]; And I saw the stars, that they were very great" (Abraham 3:1-2). . .

And would not each of the great stars take shape in its own color?

What is color? Did not Socrates see it as shape? We know about the Greeks, but how do the Egyptian paint the world? As Wolfgang Schenkel sets forth in an essential paper, the Egyptians separate basic color words into four abstract colors: red, green, white, black ("Die Farben in aegyptischer Kunst und Sprache," ZAS 88 (1963), 131-47). 


What is the semiotic significance beyond the semantic? That is: How do these basic words encompass--color--the Egyptian mind and outlook? Professor Schenkel advises us to divide the four into two sets. The Abstract Idea underlies the brush strokes of the world. White and Black signify contrast, the spectrum of brightness. Red and Green are the warm and the cold tones that paint the world across a broad spectrum of perceived color: "the yellows, oranges, and reds of such distinctly painted objects as natron, flamingos, desert walls and floor, and myrrh;" the green baboons and the lily and the sea (Sederholm, Papyrus 10808, 190). Such a manner of ordering color words, and, clearly, of ordering color itself, covers the entire field of light. 


What you would then expect is: the red ba, the green ba, the white ba, and the black. Of these, black alone has slipped away.


This is exactly what must happen. The black ba--black energy, black light--can never be. Black swirls shapeless before being comes into being, before the splendor, before the ba. The white ba, for this reason, sometimes finds continuance with the so-called bright ba. Or, other than bearing naturally contrasting names like the red ba and the green, these last two ba's often take a divine name, such as the ba of Shu--Shu in streaming atmospheric brightness--and the ba of sunburst Khepri. It is not so much as matter of euphemism but of a necessary replacement.

The four color words, with the colors, tones, contrasts, elements, or features they describe, thus together make up the Ram of Mendes (David Klotz, Adoration of the Ram, 168). These words in color, as perfect registers for the four-headed Mendesian Ram, are directional, temporal, divinized (Re, Osiris, Shu, Khepri), and elemental: minerals, metals, members of the body, elements of fire (Re), air (Shu), earth (Geb), water (Osiris). In other words, color and its linguistic and semiotic signature make up a sine qua non of the Egyptian story of creation, a story, says Joseph Smith, of "majesty and power" in which stars "roll upon their wings in their glory, in the midst of the power of God" (Doctrine and Covenants 88:45, 47). Creation happens in color, and by color; and color continues. The Egyptian verb xpr, to come into being, to change shape, to reach transformation of being, is a coloring verb.

Light, the Egyptians well knew, is Color, as is Life. But we do not find in Egypt a Newtonian notion of white light being composed of a blending of the colors. No. These colors or elements of color make up a parti-color iris, the symbol which the round of the hypocephalus presents to view, according to David Klotz. Three extant hypocephali "identify this mysterious figure" of the Transcendent Amun, or Cosmic Shu-Amun, as follows: I am the iris within the wedjat-eye, jnk p3 DfD m-Hnw wD3.t (Adoration of the Ram, 183).

"Thus, the supreme deity with whom the deceased wished to identify with was the four-ram-headed deity, the 'iris of the wedjat,' or the deity within the flames"--as if "circling flames of fire" (Adoration of the Ram, 183; Doctrine and Covenants 137:2). "Circling flames of fire" indeed: The one "whose body is that of a human, with four ram heads [is] covered with millions upon millions of eyes and 777 ears" (Edfu text quoted in Klotz, Adoration of the Ram, 168). Neither is black ever completely out of the picture; for it is as iris-cum-pupil that the round cosmic map finally comes into focus. Formerly DfD was translated "pupil"; though translation remains elusive, the reading "iris-cum-pupil" makes better sense. Re, say the books, hides in his pupil. It is true; but he hides at the very moment of revelation, by means of the glorious sunburst of his own brilliant parti-color light. He manifests but apparently: "It is Re who transforms his likeness into Four Faces in order to take shape from within Nun [the dark waters at the moment of creation]" (Edfu III 35, 4-5 = Sederholm, Papyrus 10808, 128; cf. Rhodes and Nibley, One Eternal Round, 'The Iris,' 332-3). From out the waters of Nun, from chaos, from the night and its rushing waters, there comes the cascade of light in color, the iris sunburst. It's a miracle. It's a mystery.

An even greater miracle unfolds to the faithful: Of "those relating to the (solar) iris," these are they who "through proper solar worship while on earth. . . could hope to finally join the solar iris, and to in fact go further and behold the perfection (m33 nfrw), the true form (irw m3') that is hidden within" (Klotz, Adoration of the Ram, 182). "I saw the transcendent beauty of the gate through which the heirs of that kingdom will enter, which was like unto circling flames of fire" (Joseph Smith, Doctrine and Covenants 137:2).

"In what distant deeps or skies/ Burnt the fire of thine eyes?" (Blake). "The sun is but a morning star" (Thoreau). 

Beyond, we are assured, fan out "a plurality of skies" (Erik Hornung, Books of the Afterlife, 12).

Posted by I began to reflect at 4:22 PM 0 comments  

"I came down in the beginning": The Djebaty-Title and Book of Abraham Facsimile 2

I dwell in the midst of them all; I now, therefore, have come down unto thee to declare unto thee the works which my hands have made, wherein my wisdom excelleth them all, for I rule in the heavens above, and in the earth beneath, in all wisdom and prudence, over all the intelligences thine eyes have seen from the beginning; I came down in the beginning in the midst of all the intelligences thou hast seen (Abraham 3:21).

I am Atum, when I was alone in Nun [the encircling waters], (but) I am Re when he appeared at the moment when he began to govern that which he created (Book of the Dead, chapter 17, quoted in Francoise Dunand and Christiane Zivie-Coche, Gods and Men in Egypt, 49).

Each new reading of these passages, when set together, reveals still more correspondence.

"I came down in the beginning"--the words accord well with the teachings of the both the Book of the Dead and the round hypocephalus. There is going and coming between the worlds, as we shall see.

On the rim of the hypocephalus we find the words: jnk Db3.ty m Hw.t bnbn m jwnw q3 3x zp 2 (I am the Djebaty--the one of the Djeba--in the House of the Benben in Heliopolis, On High, On High; Glorious; Glorious). The first lesson in reading Facsimile 2 centers around that one title, Djebaty. Hugh Nibley, who calls it "perhaps the most significant word on the Joseph Smith hypocephalus," pauses long over that significant word until the lesson is learned, the lesson of many meanings, many shades of meaning.

The title bespeaks mystery: Djebat, in nominal form "is the name of a place or a building," a "dwelling of the gods, Palace, Chapel" as also box or chest; Djebaty (the one of the Djebat), the relational (nisba) form ending in -y, says Conrad Leemans, signals "both a divine person and a personified object." Djebat, continues Nibley: "is also the name of the ancient city of Edfu to which the hypocephali properly belong, according to Speleers." Indeed the hypocephali "invoke and represent the Sun of Edfu, considered from of old 'the most perfect form of cosmic energy'" (Hugh Nibley, "The Three Facsimilies from the Book of Abraham," 1980, citing Louis Speleers, Catalogue des intailles et empreintes orientales des Musees Royaux de Art et de Histoire, Supplement, Bruxelles, 1943; Hugh Nibley and Michael Rhodes, One Eternal Round, 335 [and section headings: 'Between Heaven and Earth,' 335-340, and 'The Ceremonial Complex,' 340-341], quoting Conrad Leemans, "Hypocephale egyptien du Musee Royal Neerlandais d'Antiquites a Leide," in Actes du sixieme Congres Internationale des Orientalistes, 1885, 125-26, italics added).

To the many possible readings of Db3.ty, several of which point to nature and roles of the cosmic deity, I add still another. Because Db3, at Edfu, can also refer to the reed that springs from the primeval mound, Db3.ty, as "the one of the primeval reed," suggests the descent of the Creator at the beginning: "I came down in the beginning." The Edfu cosmology, in fact, yields two words (nbi.t, Db3) for the reed "upon which the first Falcon deity might perch" (David Klotz, Adoration of the Ram, 106). And such sacred writings, it should be remembered, are indeed "to be found in the temple of God," being literally engraven on the walls of Edfu Temple.

But what has a reed perch to do with the House of the Benben in Heliopolis?

I was alone together with Nun in inertness,
I not having found a place to sit or to stand.
Heliopolis not having been founded so I might be there,
The Papyrus Stalk (w3D) not having been bound so I might sit upon it.
(Great Amun Hymn cited in Adoration of the Ram, 106)

That word, w3D, by the way, appears in the same panel as figure 1 on another hypocephalus on which four baboons offer what appear to be two lotuses and two papyrus stalks to a two-headed ram in the freshness of morning. That same hypocephalus (Turin 2333), yet bright with reds and greens, on the very same panel, also features a heron or two on a perch! The heron, my favorite bird, is the bennu-bird, which naturally suggests the benben-house. The perching heron is a sign of the seasonal flood: It rests on a perch while the flood inundates the land below. On the far-left side of the panel we first find what likely is the heron on its traditional three-pointed perch; then, just to the right, the heron again (this time clearly) on a much larger perch, a three-pronged spear topped by a r3-sign; finally, on the opposite end of the panel, we find another three-pronged sign topped by a spear point, a sign of the East. These symbols, word-laden, bespeak more than I can spell at the moment: they signal time and place and action. Together, perching birds and sprouts and flowers tell one story: the stars of morning shout for joy.

It is clear from the Great Amun Hymn that the foundation of Heliopolis and the up-springing of the Perch go together. The House of the Benben, as the place of the benben-stone or pillar, is, in fact, also the place of the perch. No wonder the god is described on the hypocephalus rim as doubly lofty, even exalted (q3j), as well as doubly glorious. Like the sun in the sky, the descending god, alighting on his Reed or Pillar or Stalk, brightens the new creation, the first creation, with splendid light. The hieroglyph of the heron on a perch denotes the inundation (imHw; b'H; also nTr) and connotes a veritable flood of light. (So is the Pearl of Great Price "a veritable flood of light.") Glorious, glorious Kolob bathes the worlds in cascading apportionment.

The Djeba at Edfu can in fact be any "solid element": "In certain cases," we are told, "the name of the solid element that appeared at the beginning served as a support and justification for the sacred etymology that explained the name of the temple or its city: thus Edfu, Djeba, which derived from the name of the 'floater' (djeba) that drifted on the waters there" (Francoise Dunand and Christiane Zivie-Coche, Gods and Men in Egypt, 51). The floater herein described is a reed floater, a touch of element at odds with chaotic swirl. At Esna, the place of resting becomes "a platform of land (set) in the midst of the initial waters, that I might lean [rest] on it!" (Ibid, 51). The Djeba is, then, the place upon which the Creator descends to begin to govern that which he created. The later temple at Edfu (or Djeba) thus also becomes the place of universal governance, the "temple of the world" ("Egypt is the temple of the world").

Djeba also signifies the harpoon of Horus, a most sacred object, which surely marks both possession and victory. (No surprise, then, to spy Horus with his spear on the lower half of Turin 2333 and other exemplars.) "Descent, in Afroasiatic semantics, connotes 'battle': it is the swift descent upon an enemy, with ringing battle-cry. And the descent (or attack) stirs the hidden, passive depths into action" (Sederholm, Papyrus British Museum 10808 and Its Cultural and Religious Setting, 78).

Db3.ty, which may also signal Osiris in his coffin, box, or shrine (all Djeba) down at the nadir of all things, may therefore also signify, in a "coincidence of opposites" that is key to the Re-Osiris doctrine, "the one of the lofty reed perch" or "he who pertains to the reed perch." The United-Ba of Re and Osiris, who takes the form of the Ram of Mendes, linked as he is to the Cosmic Amun, becomes the "ultimate, transcendent deity, residing simultaneously in heaven and earth" (David Klotz, Adoration of the Ram, 168). "The key theological concern of later Egyptian religion [is] the solar-Osirian opposition. The opposition, the balancing of the poles of the universe, also holds the key to the workings of life in all three of its manifest (or hidden) realms: heaven, earth (or temple) and Netherworld. Re and Osiris meet, in a moment of awful suspense, in order to reconcile life's contrarieties and ensure its continual renewal. In response to the mighty shout of joy that follows in the wake of the sun, the cold, hidden world of death stirs inwardly into blossom" (Papyrus British Museum 10808, 77).

The reed marks both place and moment of descent, for the Egyptians the holy moment of investiture, of inhabitation, of enlivening, even an at-one-ment of worlds above and below (see Papyrus British Museum 10808, 66). "I came down in the beginning in the midst of all the intelligences (3x.w)": I came down to earth, to the primeval hill, as Tatenen, as Shepsi, as Amun, the Cosmic Creative god, the First Creation. And--I came down, as Re, to hear the words of Osiris. At Hibis the Mendesian Ram, our Kolob ram, bears the epithet sDm-wrj, the Great Listener (Klotz, Adoration of the Ram, 170; see right-hand panel, Facsimile 2).

Tatenen? Shepsi? David Klotz (Adoration of the Ram, 78, 100-101) reminds us that the hieroglyphic sign for Sps (noble) or Shepsi (the Noble one), in its Late Period form, may also be read as Tnn (distinguished) or t3-Tnn (Tatenen, the creator associated with the primeval mound, as "distinguished earth"). And if it may so be read, it must be so read: so the rule in Egyptian. (The two high feathers of the noble on this sign link it also, to be sure, with figure 2, Oliblish.) A text beginning with the invocation "O netjer Shepsi in the Zep Tepi" resounds with the mythological and ritual depths of Hermopolitan cosmology (for it is in Hermopolis that Shepsi names the creative solar god, later also associated with the Cosmic Amun). (See also One Eternal Round for Tatenen's crown as worn by Oliblish.)

Nothing drawn or written on the hypocephalus is as it first appears--or ever appears--the resonance is deep, fathoms so. Given the synthetic concision of these Late Egyptian writings, which bind the secret cosmogonic fullness of one ancient religious center to another in what appear to be crisp, abbreviated one liners, only a fool would claim competency. The very simplicity of the signs, the ease of ready translation, becomes a barrier that fences the kernel of meaning from view. Such matters ultimately require a divine touch, seeric insight, a Zaphnath-Paaneah, Joseph.

Book of Abraham Facsimile 2: The August God and the "noble and great ones"

I have recently looked at Professor Robert K. Ritner's attempt to translate the hypocephalus (Facsimile 2), as found in his The Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri: A Complete Edition ("Hypocephalus of Sheshonq," 215-226). Among other useful observations, Professor Ritner reads the sign found in figure 12 not as sDr.w (asleep) but Sps (noble). Upon reexamination of the sign, I concur. Close comparison of the Church Historian's copy and of Hedlock against other hypocephali, which often speak of the "noble god," shows that the upper half of the Sps sign had been partially rubbed away. So much for my wonderful ideas in an earlier post ("Book of Abraham Facsimile 2: A New Reading") about Kolob as the god asleep in the zp tpj. "Twixt wake and sleep," Kolob stands awake.

Getting things wrong is what it's all about--what learning is all about. We should be profoundly grateful for any new knowledge about Facsimile 2 of the sacred Book of Abraham, and, in this case, the new reading of the sign has enormous significance.

Sps instead of sDr? I had wondered about the same thing, yet strongly resisted the idea because I did not think j nTr Spsj m zp tpj made as much sense as did sDr m zp tpj (in light of my wonderful theory and because the following -s had either been partly erased or is not clear from the copy: Sps + s = Sps, etc.). But of course it does make sense. So thanks to Dr. Ritner.

We must consider m zp tpj, in this case, to mean the same as hrw pn nj msw.t=f (this day of his birth ~ sunrise ~ in the first moment), as found on another hypocephalus. In other words, the appeal to a "princely, exalted, lordly, noble, high-ranking god (manifest) in the First Moment" is an appeal to the most exalted entity among the "great and noble ones" and whose descending brightness and brilliance fill the entire universe with light and life. Thus he is also lord of heaven, earth, netherworld, mountains, etc, with power to enliven the Osirian Ba. According to the Prophet Joseph, Figure 1 (Kolob) signifies "the first creation" and is also "First in government." If nTr Spsj speaks of a princely, or principal, governing god, then m zp tpj, "in the first time," matches "the first creation."

How nicely everything matches up. The third chapter of Abraham records the vision of Kolob and the stars--thus matching Facsimile 2--and Abraham 3:22 goes on to speak of the "noble and great ones" at the morn of creation (m zp tpj). Should we then be surprised to find on Facsimile 2 a pairing of the same words: "great" and "noble"? On the left-hand panel we read both j nTr Spsj (O noble god; Leiden AMS 62: O noble ba-spirit) and nTr a3 (great god) on the right: j nTr pf a3 (O this great god). How closely "noble" and "great" belong together in these texts is made clear by the wording of the left-hand panels on Leiden AMS 62. The prayer found thereon matches that of Facsimile 2, with one exception. The prayer begins: j nTr pf Spsj instead of a3. Abraham, we are told, stood among those who qualified as both Sps and a3--and so does his restored book of scripture stand among the records of antiquity.

As Hugh Nibley would say, to find "noble and great" as yoke-fellows not on the hypocephali alone but also in Abraham chapter 3 is a "direct hit" for the Book of Abraham. The translation of Abraham 3:22 thus partakes of the "specific and the peculiar," which means not only specific to the culture and language but peculiar to a specific kind of document and to a specific theme. (The principal theme of Abraham 3 is the nature of greatness and rank.)

I note of late a faddish scepticism about the Book of Abraham. I meet such intellectual posing, such prompt dismissal with wonder.

What is it like to do baptisms for the dead in Mormon Temples?

So what is it really like to perform proxy ordinances in the Salt Lake Temple? It's not a simple matter to explain--and yet it is all quite simple.


How can one speak the love that suddenly engulfs the heart for progenitors long deceased? We know there is no death. There is no death as the world understands death. Our ancestors live on. We shall meet. 


But this much we can explain: we descend into a large round basin of water and are immersed for another in the name of Jesus Christ. We then sit by the font; or, after changing into dry clothing, sit in a nearby room, where two bearers of the Melchizedek Priesthood place their hands on our heads and in the name of Jesus Christ confirm us, for another, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and bestow the gift of the Holy Ghost. Taken together, immersion and confirmation make up one act of baptism, the legal gateway into the Kingdom of God. Even Jesus Christ received the ordinance of baptism; the Holy Ghost descended like a dove.


I cull the following description from my own journal. 

November 10, 2006

Today in the baptistry of the Salt Lake Temple I participated both as proxy and as officiator in baptisms and voice in confirmations. A mother and little girl came into the baptistry office and disappeared down the hall. They walked around a bit (“they’re touring,” or “they’re on tour,” someone observed). They came into the confirmation room where I was to act as voice in the confirmation of my Danish ancestors. I asked the little girl her name. “Leah.”  She was Leah Jeppsen and had long yellow hair and cherry-red cheeks and a light in her eyes. It was her 12^th birthday and the first time she had come to the House of the Lord. After she was confirmed, her mother said to her: “Now you’ve done temple work.” A beautiful day.

Proxy, Parable, and Priesthood: Official Declarations 1 and 2. The Doctrines of Baptism for the Dead and of Priesthood: A Shaft of Light from the Throne of God to our Hearts

I. Proxy, Parable, and Priesthood 
Doctrine and Covenants, Official Declarations 1 and 2

What was true in 1890 stands true today. Let us, then, duly liken the word of scripture given to yesterday’s prophet unto ourselves. To liken is to think "para-bolically": it is to make parables--and it is for those with ears to hear, to hear.

(Private members of the Church may dream in parables but must never shove hands at the ox-borne ark.)

“Press dispatches having been sent for political purposes, from Salt Lake City, which have been widely published, to the effect that [certain parties] “in their recent report to” [other parties] “allege that [baptisms for the dead for unauthorized persons] have been contracted” “during the past year.”

“I, therefore, as President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, do hereby, in the most solemn manner, declare that these charges are false. We are not teaching [members to perform unauthorized or celebrity baptisms or endorsing doctrines about priesthood availability], nor permitting [that is to say, authorizing] any person to enter into its practice.”

“I hereby declare my [continued commitment or] intention to submit to those [agreements and policies already contracted], and to use [technology and] my influence with the members of the Church over which I preside to have them do likewise.” (Prophets teach correct principles and let members govern themselves. They may reprove and restrain--even employ the wonders of new software technology--but they never coerce.)

Again: “Whatever was done in this matter was without my knowledge.” “There is nothing in my teachings to the Church or in those of my associates, during the time specified, which can be reasonably [note the word well] construed to inculcate or encourage [such baptisms or any speculation about priesthood availability], and when any [member] of the Church has used language which appeared to convey any such teaching, he has been promptly reproved. And I now publicly declare that my advice to the Latter-day Saints is to refrain from [participating in unauthorized baptisms or teachings].”

Following the signature of Wilford Woodruff to this official declaration, we further learn that the living President of the Church of Jesus Christ is “the only man on the earth at the present time who holds the keys of the sealing ordinances.” Any baptism, confirmation, ordination, endowment, or sealing of which the living Prophet does not approve, and so approving duly confirm or seal, “are of no efficacy, virtue, or force."

For: “All covenants, contracts, bonds, obligations, oaths, vows, performances, [teachings], connections, associations, and expectations, that are not made, entered into, and sealed by the Holy Spirit of promise, of him who is anointed. . . are of no efficacy, virtue, or force in or after the resurrection from the dead ” (Doctrine and Covenants 132:7). President Thomas S. Monson holds the keys of the sealing ordinances today.

Three pointed questions logically follow:

Will I accept of an offering, saith the Lord, that is not made in my name? 

Or will I receive at your hands that which I have not appointed? 

And will I appoint unto you, saith the Lord, except it be by law, even as I and my Father ordained unto you, before the world was?

The conclusion is clear: "For whatsoever things remain are by me; and whatsoever things are not by me shall be shaken and destroyed" (Doctrine and Covenants 132: 9-11; 14).

II. The Doctrines of Baptism for the Dead and of Priesthood

Let go the parable and turn to the words of the very same prophet of old, the same prophet who dedicated the Salt Lake Temple on April 6, 1893.

Upon first learning of the doctrine of baptism for the dead, Wilford Woodruff wrote:

“It was like a shaft of light from the throne of God to our hearts. It opened a field wide as eternity to our minds.”

“It appeared to me that the God who revealed that principle unto man was wise, just and true, possessed both the best of attributes and good sense and knowledge. I felt he was consistent with both love, mercy, justice and judgment, and I felt to love the Lord more than ever before in my life. . . . I felt to say hallelujah when the revelation came forth revealing to us baptism for the dead.”

“The first thing that entered into my mind was that I had a mother in the spirit world. She died when I was 14 months old. I never knew [my] mother” (Teachings of Presidents of the Church--Wilford Woodruff, 185).

The 1978 Revelation on Priesthood: A "Fully Sufficient Answer"

We turn now to 4 May 1978 and 1 June 1978 and to the matter of Official Declaration 2, the Revelation on Priesthood:

"At the end of the joint meeting of the Presidency and Twelve on May 4 [1978], when the priesthood policy was discussed, [Elder] LeGrand Richards asked permission to make a statement. He then reported:

 'I saw during the meeting a man seated in a chair above the organ, bearded and dressed in white, having the appearance of Wilford Woodruff. . . . I am not a visionary man. . . . This was not imagination. . . . It might be that I was privileged to see him because I am the only one here who had seen President Woodruff in person.' "

1 June 1978, following the Revelation on Priesthood (Declaration 2): "President Kimball also later said, I felt an overwhelming spirit there, a rushing flood of unity such as we had never had before.' And he knew that the fully sufficient answer had come.

Emotion overflowed as the group lingered. When someone reminded President Kimball of the earlier appearance of Wilford Woodruff to LeGrand Richards in the room, Spencer said he thought it natural: 'President Woodruff would have been very much interested, because he went through something of the same sort of experience' with the Manifesto" (Edward L. Kimball, BYU Studies, "Spencer W. Kimball and the Revelation on Priesthood," 52-3; 59).

President Woodruff's favorite hymn was "God Moves in a Mysterious Way," which includes the following thoughts:

Ye fearful Saints, fresh courage take;
The Clouds ye so much dread
Are big with mercy and shall break
In blessings on your head.

Blind unbelief is sure to err
And scan his works in vain;
God is his own interpreter,
And he will make it plain.

We need not apologize for God's mysterious ways, however embarrassing these may prove to us. Better to suffer so, than to make of God's ways a trivial journey.

Young Joseph Smith struggled for two years prior to receiving the First Vision, and was "upbraided not." And the long pleadings for knowledge about the priesthood chastened the prophetic soul of President Spencer W. Kimball. Yet the revelation came not as a rebuke: Official Declaration 2 speaks five times of blessings; it speaks of privileges and promises and temples. No one was chastened, though--as ever--our ignorance was replaced with added light.

Notes
I do not propose to speak to the history of plural marriage nor of the role of the Manifesto (Official Declaration 1) in ending that practice. The above contemplates the doctrine of the keys of the sealing power, whereby approved ordinances alone are made binding and efficacious by the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. (Even then, the recipient of the sacrament retains full right of reception or refusal.) All other ordinances, no matter where performed or by whom--and no matter the temporary record--are illegal, null, and void in the sight of the Church and in the sight of God. An attempted baptism for the dead becomes a far different thing than an offering or a record "worthy of all acceptation" (Doctrine and Covenants 128:24). 


Initial misunderstandings are only to be expected, but for writers, possibly through neglect of easily accessed material, to continue to ignore the plain doctrines about priesthood keys, sealing powers, baptisms, and "a house of order" becomes tantamount to misrepresentation.


The readily available revelations published by the Prophet Joseph Smith over 150 years ago that have bearing on proxy work, or baptism for the dead include: Doctrine and Covenants 110, 124, 127, 128, 132, 137 (and 138: President Joseph F. Smith). See also 1 Corinthians 15:29, the Pauline basis for proxy baptism. Recent articles in the Deseret News treat the latest statements by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints about unauthorized baptisms for the dead, including facts about the latest technology to block illegal submissions of names. The real news, of course, is that the dead live on in a world of eternal opportunity and that God continues to speak through His authorized servants today. 


The Latter-day Saint people, who overflow with all but boundless admiration for our Jewish brothers and sisters, are outraged by unauthorized baptisms for the dead. Besides, such illegal actions, and by illegal I mean actions which invoke God's name and authority in vain, instantaneously become yet another club for our non-Jewish critics with which to beat us over the head. The following articles show some understanding of Mormon doctrine within the American Jewish community:


"Outraged by Mormon Proxy Baptism? Not this Jew," 29 Feb. 2010, patriotpost.us

Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe, 29 Feb. 2012, "Mormon Ritual is no Threat to Jews."

The Book of Abraham: Case Closed (Or, Sarah to the Rescue)

What Hugh Nibley Meant (about the Book of Breathings). Or, How Sarah Elucidates and Rescues the Revealed Book of Abraham

"Since the beginning," writes Hugh Nibley in 2001, "the Pearl of Great Price has been waiting in the wings, held in reserve for a special time. It would seem that time is now, for within a decade of the publication of the Joseph Smith Papyri in 1968 (after their rediscovery in 1967), strange and portentous things have happened" ("Approach to John Gee, Guide to the Joseph Smith Papyri," FARMS Review 13:2 (2001), 63-4). Too modest to include his own work among these "portentous things," another's lips will now praise.

The Pearl of Great Price was indeed held in reserve for a special time, the lifetime of a special man, who, even beyond his lifetime, "being dead yet speaketh." So wrote President John Taylor of Parley P. Pratt; now, five years after Brother Nibley's call to "that near-touching land," we learn with joy from an encyclopaedic study of Book of Abraham Facsimile 2 entitled, One Eternal Round. The work also brings to a round, full circle, the flurry of criticism encompassing the Book of Abraham: "Come, lay your books and papers by": "The teacher's work is done."

If there ever was a time to discover what Hugh Nibley has to teach us about books of Enoch, Moses, and Abraham, it would seem that time is now.

Things really got going in 1976 with Hugh Nibley's publication of The Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri: An Egyptian Endowment. The volume puts forward the unwelcome thesis that the Book of Breathings, following the pattern of prior Egyptian funerary writings (like the Book of the Dead and the Netherworld Books), constitutes a ceremony of initiation having resonance in both early Jewish and Christian texts. Although ignored in bibliography, Hugh Nibley's work made its rounds and proved revolutionary among students of Ancient Egyptian religion. (The official annual notice of egyptological bibliography, while praising the work, cautions readers about its Mormon ideas.) A good summary of what egyptologists think about initiation and mystery today may be found in Heidelberg Professor Jan Assmann's Tod und Jenseits im Alten Aegypten [Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt]. (I can't say whether Professor Assmann had studied Nibley's work--the theme of initiation (if not salvation!) is in the air and very popular--but the two volumes do make for powerful bookends.) Given the profound influence of Hugh Nibley's thorough work, an influence only at its first stages, I may be excused for putting forward some of his ideas in my own words in what now follows.

Because the verb bz (to spark a flame), associated with the ritual purpose of the hypocephalus in Book of the Dead Chapter 162 ("to spark a flame under the head" of the mummy), is a homonym of the word for initiation into the Egyptian secrets, we may safely conclude that the hypocephalus, like the Book of Breathings, makes up a document of initiation (see One Eternal Round). In fact the head of the mummy, so enlightened, now corresponds to the sun: the spark blazes into eternal glory. No wonder Facsimile 1, attached as it is to a Book of Breathings, is followed--but only in the inspired Book of Abraham!--by the hypocephalus (as Facsimile 2). Hugh Nibley further considers the brilliant Wedjat Eye (and the hypocephalus comprehends an eye) as source or focal point of the spark (Hugh Nibley and Michael Rhodes, One Eternal Round, 233). The Wedjat Eye, in the Prophet Joseph's Explanation of Facsimile 2, also serves as a key for unlocking the heavens to the patriarchs, an idea akin to that of bz and the rites of initiation.

That is what Brothers Rhodes and Nibley are trying to express.

The idea of Abraham and his posterity as initiands makes up sufficient reason for not being startled to find his papyrus roll in proximity to a Book of Breathings and assorted chapters from the Book of the Dead (certain scraps of which are now housed in the Church History Library). And yet it is marvelously startling!

An even greater reason lies in Abraham's claim to possession--"in mine own hands," he says--of records of ancient date (Abraham 1:31). Hor, the Ptolemaic Period priest on whose behalf the Joseph Smith Book of Breathings was copied, aspires to possess "greater [ceremonial] knowledge," even as Abraham, and through Abraham, Pharaoh. The Theban priesthood in Ptolemaic times likely included direct line descendants from the royalty and officials of Abraham's day. And is the preservation (and copying) of such records throughout the centuries far-fetched? Certainly not. Abraham himself is good enough to provide us with a description of a like textual transmission from the ancients, copies, abridgements, and all (Abraham 1:31). That's the pattern. That's all we need to know, really.

These records of Abraham and Joseph, including documents therewith associated (the latter articulated or composed after the pattern of ancient ceremonies), came down directly (or after rediscovery) through the royal lineage of the fathers to their priestly heirs in Thebes. The Egyptians had libraries, but every indication suggests the Joseph Smith papyri were family (lineage) documents. These records constituted the very authority that confirmed priests like Hor and his father, Osoroeris, in their offices. Thus we see "the claim of both the King and the Patriarch to exclusive possession of and access to certain written records that went back to the beginning of time and confirmed his particular claim to legitimacy of priesthood and kingship" (Hugh Nibley, Abraham in Egypt, 92ff.). To the discerning reader, the Book of Abraham narrates not only the stunning travels of the patriarch; it also reveals, with laser-like precision, just how we are to understand these few remnants of papyri that have come into "our own hands" today. Case closed.

Since Nibley published his study of the Book of Breathings as an Egyptian Endowment Ceremony, Latter-day Saint students, running in the track of Professor Marc Coenen's clarifying publications about the ancient owners and dating of the Joseph Smith Book of Breathings (at 200 B.C. "the oldest Book of Breathings text that can be dated"), all take note that Hor's lot in the priesthood includes a rare Resheph-Min office: "Prophet of Min who massacres his enemies." The office answers to the act of sacrifice depicted on Facsimile 1. A Canaanite god of war who joins the Egyptian pantheon, Resheph (who dwells in the house of Montu ~ Manti) absorbs his identity in Min, who, in turn, blends with Hor as avenger of his father, Osiris. That the Book of Abraham's violent "god of El-Kenah" bears comparison with Canaan's Resheph, whose name bespeaks the vivid lightning and flames of fire, has not escaped the notice of Latter-day Saints! Indeed one of Abraham's own descendants, through Ephraim, bears--and here's ritual reversal--the name Resheph, perhaps now to be understood as descriptive of the God of Israel: "I cause the wind and the fire to be my chariot," Jehovah tells Abraham (Abraham 2:7; see 1 Chronicles 7:25).

Though Professor Coenen sees in Facsimile 1 not sacrifice but Osirian resurrection and the conception of Horus, the figure of the "priest of Elkenah" does something recall the unique bronze figure of "Min who massacres the enemy," "dressed in a short kilt, held up by two bands that cross over the breast and back" (p. 1113). In fact, sacrifice, resurrection, and conception all form a single constellation that Facsimile 1 delicately manages to display.

Bibliographical Note: Marc Coenen, "The dating of the Papyri Joseph Smith I, X and XI and Min who massacres his enemies," in Willy Clarysse et al. (eds) Egyptian Religion: The Last Thousand Years II, 1103-14, and esp. pages 1111-3 (Leuven, 1998). A detailed review of the Hor Book of Breathings (or Document of Fellowship) and the nature and historical context of the priestly offices of Hor and Osoroeris, including examples of symbolic slaughter and burning with correspondence to Facsimile 1, is John Gee, "Some Puzzles of the Joseph Smith Papyri," FARMS Review 20:1 (2008), 113-157. Professors Kerry Muhlestein and W.V. Smith have also noted the import for Latter-day Saints of Marc Coenen's breakthrough studies. 

The record attests a symbolic ceremonial killing of foreigners, at centers like Philae, Edfu, Karnak, with special maces, swords, clubs, including "a particular kind of [bladed] mace much resembling in shape the Dd-pillar, the symbol of Osiris' enduring life and dynasty," as also resurrection (Val H. Sederholm, Papyrus British Museum 10808 and Its Cultural and Religious Setting, Leiden: Brill, 2006, 114). "The king, playing Horus-Min, cuts off the heads of his father's enemies at the stroke of a pole-axe [or bladed mace, both sword and club]. The special word for killing at Edfu [Ddj!] alludes to Osiris and the stability of his dynastic line" (Papyrus 10808, 117). At Karnak we see paired depictions of Resheph and "the pharaoh stabbing two prisoners kneeling in a metal kettle [for burning] with their arms tied [like Abraham's] behind their backs in front of 'Min who [massacres] his enemies' " (Coenen, 1113). Behind Min "stands a tree on a hill surrounded by a wall," a setting that evokes for any Latter-day Saint student "the hill called Potiphar's Hill, at the head of the plain of Olishem"; the tree (or, Heliopolitan pillar) likewise recalls the sacrifice of the "three virgins" who "would not bow down to worship gods of wood or of stone" (Abraham 1:10-11; Coenen, 1113; for ceremonial hills marked with standing stones see One Eternal Round, 170-3; another royal massacre and burning of enemies, 179).

By killing the enemies of Osiris, the priest reverses the enemies' own act of killing and thus ensures both Osiris' resurrection and Horus' dynastic claims. As the priest of Min who massacres his enemies, Hor becomes Pharaoh's (Horus') stand-in, a role evoking the sacrifice-mad "priest of Pharaoh" in Abraham's account. And here's a genuine touch: "And the Lord. . .smote the priest that he died; and there was great mourning in Chaldea, and also in the court of Pharaoh" (Abraham 1:20). "Great mourning" in Pharaoh's court? for a distant priest? To the Egyptian reader, all is clear: by smiting the Pharaoh's ceremonial agent, God has smitten the Pharaoh himself and has also smitten his dynastic line (cf. the slaying of the firstborn in Exodus). The mourning must then match in intensity and cloud of disaster that prevailing at the actual death of a king. One can picture the choking dust storm at Ur sweeping down to Egypt. Mene, Mene: The king must die.

Hugh Nibley makes much of masking, mummery, and substitutes, including the broadly attested rituals of substitute sacrifice. And substitute mourning reflects substitute sacrifice, priest for king--after all, as Nibley notes, the priest also "is slain in [Abraham's] place" (Abraham in Egypt, 26).

Every ceremonial preparation of a mummy for burial follows a similar, even Osirian pattern. To "wrap" (wt) is both to kill and also to resurrect (wt resonates with mwt, put to death). Addressing "the Asiatic, Libyan, Medjay, and Nubian threat at Egypt's four borders" (matching in precise cardinal order--east, west, north, south--the regional gods of Elkenah, Libnah, Mahmackrah, Korash in the Book of Abraham), the priest intones: "You are the rebels that 'made a wrapping,' 'made a wrapping' Father Osiris. Accordingly, Father Osiris commanded that I, in the form of Mekhenty-Irty [~ Horus], should smite this your enemy" (New Kingdom Netherworld Book of the Night II, 87-8 = Sederholm, Papyrus 10808, 126). "Smite this your enemy" (not simply "smite you") is euphemistic, ironic: the notion of substitutes runs very deep in the Egyptian sacrificial night.

The act of sacrifice meets the idea of resurrection, for each notionally requires the other. To students of egyptology that paradox of Osirian ceremony in which the sharp-clawed jackal Anubis, troubler of desert burials, both cuts into and wraps the body, preparatory to resurrection, is well-known. Facsimile 1 at once illustrates the Osirian resurrection found in the Book of Breathings and the sacrifice and escape (in token of resurrection) of Abraham as reflection thereto. Abraham becomes as Osiris himself, for the Egyptians found in Abraham's heralded escape from sacrificial death a living token or surety of Osirian promise. All this makes of Abraham, to Egyptian eyes, a king. No wonder, "by [jittery] politeness of the king," Abraham was allowed broad scope to substitute on the throne and then teach whatever he wished. Not far off, fair Sarah glitters like the desert sun. It's the Ammon and Lamoni story in the Book of Alma all over again. (And can there be any doubt as to the reception of the message?)

That's what Brother Nibley meant to convey, and the latest findings are bearing him out.

In fact there is nothing--not even the recovered Apocalypse of Abraham--that attests more to the reality of an Egyptian record of Abraham and Joseph than the Joseph Smith Book of Breathings (an Egyptian Endowment), along with its vignettes, Book of Abraham Facsimiles 1 and 3. The discovery of the Kirtland papyri, as we now have it, thus paradoxically delivers more evidence of an authentic Egyptian setting for Abraham than if we had simply recovered the very papyrus portions from which the Prophet Joseph had translated the record itself (and Doctrine and Covenants 5:7 so attests!).

If that seems a bold claim, consider the following specific and peculiar parallel (not parallel mania so-called) between the story of Abraham in Egypt and the title of the Book of Breathings:

"The very first line of the hieratic text bears a remarkable resemblance to Abraham's words in both Genesis and the Book of Abraham: 'Here begins the writing which Isis made for her brother Osiris to cause his ba [soul] to live.' In the Book of Abraham and the Bible, Abraham says to his wife (and sister), Sarah, 'and my soul shall live because of thee' " (Nibley and Rhodes, One Eternal Round, "The Book of Breathings Bears Witness," 148).

" 'Therefore say unto them, I pray thee, thou art my sister, that it may be well with me for thy sake, and my soul shall live because of thee.' Why not simply, 'I shall live'? Why the awkward Egyptian idiom, 'My ba shall live'? That is an Egyptian doctrine" (Ibid. 148).

"What is going on here? Abraham and Sarah identified with Isis and Osiris? That is just the beginning of the parallels that affirm their identity," a dozen or so of which duly follow to the astonishment of the reader (151).

Of Sarah, as of Isis, are gifts of crown and throne. These gifts must be granted; they can never be bought. Thus it is the egyptological reading of the role of the characters surrounding the throne in Facsimile 3 that paradoxically sheds necessary light on the Prophet Joseph's counterintuitive interpretation which renders King and Prince for Hathor and Isis. We begin to detect, seize hold of, in a word, comprehend, the prophetic light, only after we have seen the dark masking and mumming of the Egyptian drama unfold. Then the prophetic explanation also unfolds (Hugh Nibley, Abraham in Egypt, Chapter 5: "All the Court's a Stage: Facsimile 3, A Royal Mumming", 116-148; One Eternal Round, "Isis and Sarah," 155-160).

Pharaoh "would fain claim" the new and everlasting covenant of the Priesthood (Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews, I, 223):

In the love he bore Sarah, he wrote out a marriage contract, deeding to her all he owned in the way of gold and silver. . .

But it is Abraham who claims the throne.

This is Sarah to the rescue! And we remind the reader that the purpose of having a Book of Abraham at all lies in our having had restored to us, through the ministration of Elias to Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery in the Kirtland Temple, the keys of the Abrahamic covenant, the covenant of eternal marriage (Doctrine and Covenants 110:12). Elijah then conferred the sealing power of the Holy Priesthood. Sarah and Abraham example the new and everlasting covenant of marriage.

To deny the genuineness or eternal worth of the revealed Book of Abraham would accordingly be to deny oneself the opportunity to become "the seed of Abraham" and thus a lawful inheritor of the blessings of the Abrahamic covenant of Priesthood (Doctrine and Covenants 84:34). The Book of Abraham serves as a surety of the promise of eternal life. It amounts to a sefer, a ketubah that secures the heritage of Jacob: "Look unto Abraham your father, and unto Sarah who bare you" (Isaiah 51:2; 50:1). And nothing was more important to Brother Nibley than his own covenantal contract of eternal marriage. And that's how Hugh Nibley lived.

The story of Sarah saving her husband's life from Pharaoh by claiming to be his sister (Abraham's second Osirian escape from death) is a story we can now come to terms with thanks to the latter-day recovery of the lost Document of Breathing which Isis made for her brother, Osiris (as the title of the sefer runs), a more precise reading of which may be the Document of Covenantal Unity (sn-sn). It's a Marriage Certificate.

And that's what Hugh Nibley meant!



Notes
For the like episode of Sarah's escape from King Abimelech (in light of the changes in the Joseph Smith Translation), see the essay, "A Covering of the Eyes," posted 30 June 2010, on valsederholm.blogspot.com.


Copyright 2011 by Val H. Sederholm, PhD (Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, UCLA, 2001)