Quotation ledger

Rule for this file: an entry exists only if the source was opened and the words were copied out of it. A plausible-sounding quotation that was not opened is a fabrication. Where the article needed a claim it could not verify, the article states it without quotation marks and names the unopened source in the [^unopened] footnote.

Spelling, punctuation, and capitalization are as printed in the source.

Joseph Smith Papers — how these were read

bin/pagetext.py does not work on josephsmithpapers.org; the site ships its transcripts inside a __NEXT_DATA__ JSON payload, and plain-text scraping of the rendered page silently promotes struck-through words into the reading text. Document transcripts were therefore read with bin/jsptext.py, which marks cancellations [-like this-].

Editorial prose on the Joseph Smith Papers — volume introductions and document source notes — is not a transcript and carries no cancellations, but it does embed biography popups inside <aside> elements. Those were stripped before checking, so that no popup text is spliced into a quotation, and the raw page was consulted separately for the person names the popups carry.

Result of the re-check: no quotation in this article carried a canceled word. The article's only Joseph Smith document quotation — the history's "continually engaged in translating an alphabet" — is quoted from the Church's Gospel Topics essay, which was opened, rather than from a rendered Joseph Smith Papers page.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, "Translation and Historicity of the Book of Abraham," Gospel Topics Essays (2016)

Source opened: churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics-essays/translation-and-historicity-of-the-book-of-abraham?lang=eng.

• "Only small fragments of the long papyrus scrolls once in Joseph Smith's possession exist today. The relationship between those fragments and the text we have today is largely a matter of conjecture."
• "None of the characters on the papyrus fragments mentioned Abraham's name or any of the events recorded in the book of Abraham. Latter-day Saint and non-Latter-day Saint Egyptologists agree that the characters on the fragments do not match the translation given in the book of Abraham."
• "Neither the rules nor the translations in the grammar book correspond to those recognized by Egyptologists today."
• "These fragments date to between the third century B.C.E. and the first century C.E., long after Abraham lived."
• "Neither the Lord nor Joseph Smith explained the process of translation of the book of Abraham."
• "The veracity and value of the book of Abraham cannot be settled by scholarly debate concerning the book's translation and historicity."
• "Joseph's translation was not a literal rendering of the papyri as a conventional translation would be. Rather, the physical artifacts provided an occasion for meditation, reflection, and revelation. They catalyzed a process whereby God gave to Joseph Smith a revelation about the life of Abraham, even if that revelation did not directly correlate to the characters on the papyri."
• "it is likely futile to assess Joseph's ability to translate papyri when we now have only a fraction of the papyri he had in his possession."
• "this claim rests on the assumption that a vignette and its adjacent text must be associated in meaning."
• "A third-century papyrus from an Egyptian temple library connects Abraham with an illustration similar to facsimile 1."
• "People who challenged the standing religious order, either in Egypt or in the regions over which it had influence (such as Canaan), could and did suffer execution for their offenses."
• "modern scholars have identified it as being among the gods worshipped by ancient Mesopotamians." (Of Elkenah. The essay names neither the scholars nor the inscription.)
• The essay quoting Joseph Smith's history for July 1835: "continually engaged in translating an alphabet to the Book of Abraham, and arranging a grammar of the Egyptian language as practiced by the ancients." And: "This 'grammar,' as it was called, consisted of columns of hieroglyphic characters followed by English translations recorded in a large notebook by Joseph's scribe, William W. Phelps."

Klaus Baer, "The Breathing Permit of Hôr," Dialogue 3, no. 3 (Autumn 1968): 109–134

Source opened: the journal's HTML transcription at dialoguejournal.com/articles/a-translation-of-the-apparent-source-of-the-book-of-abraham/, footnotes included.

• Anubis is "the jackal-headed god who embalmed the dead and thereby assured their resurrection."
• The panel below the couch is "a decorative pattern derived from the niched facade of a protohistoric Egyptian palace."
• "He is, of course, not holding a knife."
• "I must confess with some embarrassment that I also 'saw' the falcon's head before reading Nelson's study."
• "the vignette was probably in essentially the same condition in 1835 that it is now, and the restorations, both that sketched on the backing and that in 'Facsimile No. 1' in the PGP, are not copies of the missing parts."
• "this is not what Joseph Smith drew, and it follows that the three groups in question are only his suggested restoration."
• Of line 2's groups: "are clearly proposed restorations that bear no resemblance to the signs that certainly were on the papyrus before it was damaged."
• Character groups Baer matched to the papyrus, in Joseph Smith's renderings: "The priest of Elk Kener"; "And as they lifted up their hands"; "Behold Potiphers hill."
• The hypocephalus was made for an "Osiris Shoshenq" and "cannot possibly reproduce a portion of the Breathing Permit of Hor, though it also is supposed to be 'from the Book of Abraham.'"
• Facsimile 3: a man "being introduced by Maat (4), the goddess of justice, and Anubis (6), the guide of the dead, into the presence of Osiris (1), enthroned as king of the Netherworld. Behind Osiris stands Isis (2), and in front of him is an offering-stand (3) with a jug and some flowers on it."
• The line below Facsimile 3: "O gods of . . . , gods of the Caverns, gods of the south, north, west, and east, grant well-being to Osiris Hor, justified."
• Above and left of the man: "probably to be read: 'Osiris Hor, justified forever.'"
• Baer's roll-length reconstruction allows "a small amount for margin around the latter" — quoted here as Cook and Smith reprint it, page 36.

Robert K. Ritner, "The 'Breathing Permit of Hôr' Thirty-Four Years Later," Dialogue 33, no. 4 (Winter 2000): 97–119

Source opened: dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V33N04_107.pdf, extracted with pdftotext -layout. Printed pagination visible in the extraction.

• "changes from Baer's understanding of the document are few and do not challenge his basic understanding of the text."
• Page 102: "The title šʿ.t n snsn, literally 'Document of (or "for") Breathing,' employs the term for an official document or letter (šʿ.t), so that these 'books' serve as formal 'permits'—or perhaps more accurately 'passports'—to the world of the gods. To be effective, they had to accompany the corpse."
• The ritual directions: "the Breathing Document, being what is written on its interior and exterior, shall be wrapped in royal linen and placed (under) his left arm in the midst of his heart. The remainder of his wrapping shall be made over it."
• Papyrus Louvre 3207: "the Osiris Hor, the justified, son of Osorwer, the justified, and born by the housewife and sistrum-player of Amon-Re, Taikhibit, the justified."
• "The text is a formal document or 'permit' created by Isis and copied by Thoth to assure that the deified Hor regains the ability to breathe and function after death, with full mobility, access to offerings and all other privileges of the immortal gods. The implications, basic symbolism and intent of the text are certain."
• Facsimile 1: "a vignette depicting the resurrection of the Osiris Hor on the customary lion-headed funerary couch, attended by the jackal-headed Anubis and (probably) the winged Isis, while the human-headed ba-spirit of Hor hovers above his head."
• Note 28: "Wrongly restored with a bird's head and identified in Facsimile 1, Fig. 1, of The Book of Abraham as 'The Angel of the Lord.' This is true only if Joseph Smith's 'Lord' was Osiris."
• Facsimile 3 labels: "Recitation by Osiris, Foremost of the Westerners, Lord of Abydos(?), the great god forever and ever(?)"; "Isis the great, the god's mother"; "Maat, mistress of the gods"; "The Osiris Hor, justified forever"; "Recitation by Anubis, who makes protection(?), foremost of the embalming booth."
• "Smith misunderstood 'Pharaoh' as a personal name (cf. Abraham 1:25), and the name above figure 2 is unquestionably that of the female Isis. Osiris (fig. 1) is certainly not 'Abraham,' nor is it possible that the altar of Osiris (fig. 3) 'signifies Abraham.' Maat (fig. 4) is not a male 'prince,' Hor (fig. 5) is not a 'waiter,' nor is Anubis (fig. 6) a 'slave' (because of his dark skin)."
• "there is no justification for Gee's attempt to more than double this figure to '320 cm (about 10 feet).'"
• Of the second-century BC redating: "controversial, though possible."
• "human sacrifice in Egypt was rare and more properly political execution."
• "Modern scholars have examined many hundreds of hieratic documents and can, therefore, determine the standards of contemporary Egyptian handwriting. Joseph Smith had no such experience. With no frame of reference beyond his own limited collection, he had no reason or incentive to consider the writing poor."
• Quoting Anthony Leahy: "in 1914 Egyptology was essentially an amateur subject." Ritner's answer: the 1912 assessments "remain valid in 2001."

Andrew W. Cook and Christopher C. Smith, "The Original Length of the Scroll of Hôr," Dialogue 43, no. 4 (Winter 2010): 1–42

Source opened: dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V43N04_413.pdf, extracted with pdftotext -layout. The journal's HTML page carries only the opening; the analysis is in the PDF.

• "The main text of the canonized Book of Abraham contains 5,506 English words. The hieratic text in the instructions column of the Document of Breathing translates to ~97 English words. This column is ~9 cm wide. Hence, if the Book of Abraham was written on the scroll in the same hieratic font as this portion of the Document of Breathing, it would have taken up ~9(5,506/97) = ~511 cm of papyrus."
• "Recently, John Gee proposed that 1250.5 cm (41 feet) of papyrus could be missing from the interior end of the scroll of Hôr."
• "Gee reported 9.7 and 9.5 cm as the lengths of the first and seventh windings, respectively, but offered no details concerning his method for identifying the winding end-points. When we attempted to replicate Gee's results, we found that his measurements did not seem to be accurate and, in fact, required the papyrus to be impossibly thin."
• Quoting Friedhelm Hoffmann: "The windings cannot be put into practice under 2.5 cm."
• "We thus reject the T = 0.0075 cm estimate and take the average of the remaining three measurements to obtain T = 0.0701 cm. This effective thickness is in good agreement with the value of ~0.8 mm reported by Hartmut Stegemann for most of the Dead Sea papyrus scrolls."
• "Therefore, no more than 56 cm of papyrus can be missing from the scroll's interior."
• "Baer's estimate for the length of papyrus missing from the scroll's interior, starting from the left edge of the innermost extant fragment, is 21 – 14 + 35 + 0.5 + 16 + 0.5 = 59 cm. This estimate agrees remarkably well with the 56 cm obtained from our winding analysis. The 3 cm difference between Baer's text-based estimate and our geometric estimate is within Baer's 5 cm tolerance for the scroll's overall length."
• Oliver Cowdery's December 1835 expectation that the translation would fill "large volumes."

The Joseph Smith Papers, Revelations and Translations, Volume 4 — editorial prose

Sources opened: josephsmithpapers.org/intro/introduction-to-egyptian-material; /paper-summary/introduction-to-egyptian-papyri-circa-300-100-bc; and the source note to /paper-summary/book-of-abraham-manuscript-circa-july-circa-november-1835-a-abraham-14-26/1. Popup <aside> blocks were stripped before checking, so no biography text is spliced into these quotations.

• "The Kirtland-era manuscripts contain the first portion of what would later be published as the Book of Abraham, along with Egyptian characters copied in the left margin. Most of these characters were copied from the papyri, but few of them are found in the Egyptian Alphabet documents or in the Grammar and Alphabet volume."
• "they believed the meaning of each character was shaped by its position in a language hierarchy made of five tiers (which they called 'parts' or 'degrees'), and they thought marks such as underlining could be added to a character to change its meaning. In the language system found in the Grammar and Alphabet volume, each character contained five different degrees of meaning, and the definition of the character in each successive degree was more complex or detailed than in the previous degree."
• Chandler's certificate said the translation corresponded "in the most minute matters" to knowledge gleaned "in many eminent cities . . . [from] the most learned." The editors: "In reality, though, modern Egyptological scholarship was so new that neither Chandler nor any other American at that time would likely have been able to make such an attestation authoritatively." And: "Chandler may have issued the certificate to ingratiate himself to the Latter-day Saints and increase the likelihood of a sale."
• Albert Brown to "Dear Parents," 1 Nov 1835: "Many of the Learned have been to kirtland to examine the characters but none of them have been able to tell but very little a bout them and yet Joseph without any of the wisdom of this world can read them and know what they are."
• Cleveland Whig, 5 Aug 1835, "Another Humbug": "We are credibly informed that the Mormons have purchased of Mr. Chandler . . . the Mummies which he recently exhibited in this village; and that the prophet Joe has ascertained, by examining the papyrus through his spectacles, that they are the bodies of Joseph, (the son of Abraham,) and King Abimeleck and his daughter." (The ellipsis is the Joseph Smith Papers' own.)
• W. W. Phelps to Sally Waterman Phelps: Smith "soon knew what they were and said they, the 'rolls of papyrus,' contained the sacred record kept of Joseph in Pharaoh's Court in Egypt, and the teachings of Father Abraham."
• "When revising the Bible, Smith worked with a copy of the King James Version, apparently with no other instrument at hand. Some revisions, like minor grammatical changes, may well have been considered to be the result of human reason rather than divine revelation." And: "evidence also suggests that Smith and his scribes consulted Adam Clarke's biblical commentary as they considered the text." And: "All of these processes—both intellectual and inspired—provided precedents that Joseph Smith could have drawn upon while producing the Book of Abraham."
• "Kircher's dictionary explored the symbolic nature of the hieroglyphs, projecting his own Neoplatonic philosophy onto them."
• "According to Egyptologists, the papyri purchased by JS and his associates originated in Thebes, Egypt (the present-day city of Luxor), and date to sometime between the third century and the first century bc."
• "created for individuals who died sometime in the third or second centuries bc."
• "The surviving papyrus fragments represent only a portion of the original collection."
• "Some scholars who have studied the Book of Breathing for Horos estimate that the roll originally measured between 150 and 156 centimeters; the extant portion of the papyrus is roughly 66 centimeters long."
• The editors' note to that sentence: "One scholar posits that the roll could have been as long as about 1,300 centimeters."
• "Scholars estimate that this roll was originally about 300 or about 700 centimeters; the surviving portion is roughly 92 centimeters long."
• Source note to Manuscript A: "These lines formed a margin on the left side of each page, ranging in width from ½ inch to ¾ inch (1–2 cm). Characters from the Book of Breathing for Horos, the Egyptian Alphabet documents or the Grammar and Alphabet volume, and possibly other unknown sources were copied in the margins."
• Same source note: "The first and second pages each bear a vertical line drawn in graphite; the third page bears a vertical line in ink. The fourth page does not contain a vertical line."

Joseph Smith, Letter to Emma Smith, 4 June 1834 — read for article 8, re-checked here

Read with bin/jsptext.py on 2026-08-08. The transcript of page 57 reads "so large a company of social honest [-men-] and sincere men," with "men" struck out at the first position. The word Joseph Smith canceled must not appear in a quotation. Article 8 quotes the passage without it, and this ledger records the cancellation so a later editor does not "restore" it.

John Gee, An Introduction to the Book of Abraham (Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 2017)

Source opened: the publisher's free full text at rsc.byu.edu/introduction-book-abraham. The online edition is unpaginated; the chapter is given for each quotation.

• "Historical Overview," quoting the 1842 publication: "a translation of some ancient records that have fallen into [Joseph Smith's] hands from the catacombs of Egypt, purporting to be the writings of Abraham while he was in Egypt, called 'The Book of Abraham, Written by his Own Hand, upon Papyrus.'" And: "which papyrus of the four or five in his possession was never specified."
• "Historical Overview," quoting Oliver Cowdery on the collection: "two or three other small pieces of papyrus, with astronomical calculations, epitaphs, &c."
• "Joseph Smith and the Papyri," quoting Warren Parrish: "I have set by his side and penned down the translation of the Egyptian Hieroglyphicks as he claimed to receive it by direct inspiration of Heaven." Gee: "This is the only recorded statement of anyone directly involved in the translation about how it was done."
• "Joseph Smith and the Papyri": "We have no firsthand evidence that Joseph Smith used the Urim and Thummim or a seer stone in translating the Book of Abraham. Some thirdhand accounts claim he did, but those accounts do not come from anyone who actually observed the translation."
• "Joseph Smith and the Papyri," quoting the journal: "labored on the Egyptian alphabet, in company with brsr. O. Cowdery and W. W. Phelps: The system of astronomy was unfolded"; "recommenced translating the ancient records"; "transcribing Egyptian characters from the papyrus."
• "Frequently Asked Questions": "The Book of Abraham is not on the surviving fragments of the Joseph Smith Papyri."
• "The Contents of the Joseph Smith Papyri": "most purported translations of the Joseph Smith Papyri are not actually translations of the Joseph Smith Papyri." And: "The contents of the papyri do not seem to match the Book of Abraham."
• "Frequently Asked Questions": the Egyptian-language documents "seem to have belonged to W. W. Phelps and are in his handwriting, with additions by Warren Parrish"; attributing them to Joseph Smith "depends more on assumption and assertion than on demonstration."
• "Frequently Asked Questions": "at least one of the facsimiles, and perhaps all three, had to have come from a different papyrus than the text of the Book of Abraham, and it is hard to see how Joseph Smith would not have known this."
• "The Facsimiles": the in-text references to the facsimiles are "nineteenth-century editorial insertions," and "the Book of Abraham actually reads smoothly without these additions."
• "The Facsimiles": the 1842 sketch of Facsimile 2 "shows damaged areas of that facsimile that Reuben Hedlock filled in for the publication."
• "The Facsimiles," on the Egyptian temple formula: a "strong one who subjugated the evil doer."
• "Frequently Asked Questions": "while many of the accounts have Abraham saved from the fire in Ur, most of those accounts have God himself saving Abraham, and only a few accounts, not available in English until after Joseph Smith's death, have Abraham saved by an angel—as it is in the Book of Abraham. If Joseph Smith were to borrow one of the accounts available to him, we would expect him to borrow the details as well."
• "Frequently Asked Questions": "more than half of the pictures do not match up with the proper texts."
• "The Book of Abraham in the Ancient World": "although the initial work is promising, the identification is not yet certain." And, of Nibley: his historical work "has a tendency to use myth for history and to flatten the chronology of sources from a variety of periods."
• "The Relationship of the Book of Abraham Text to the Papyri": "for none of the theories is the evidence as neat or as compelling as one might wish." And the sermon line, "I learned it by translating the papyrus now in my house."
• "The Facsimiles," summarizing Kevin Barney: "it does not matter how ancient Egyptians or modern Egyptologists interpret the scene, since such will not reflect ancient Jewish interpretations of the same scenes."

The Pearl of Great Price — Book of Abraham and facsimile explanations

Source opened: churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/pgp/abr/… on 2026-08-08.

Corrections made during verification

• Warren Parrish, altered. The draft read "by direct inspiration from Heaven." Gee prints "by direct inspiration of Heaven." Corrected in index.md.
• Wilford Woodruff and Parley P. Pratt, removed. The draft quoted Woodruff as writing that Joseph Smith translated "through the Urim & Thummim," and said Pratt told British readers the same. Neither source was opened, and Gee — a defender of the Book of Abraham — states that no firsthand evidence puts the Urim and Thummim in this translation and that such accounts are thirdhand. The quotation was removed and replaced by Gee's own characterisation.
• Joseph Smith Papers volume introduction, truncated. The draft quoted "Most of these characters were copied from the papyri" and stopped. The sentence continues "but few of them are found in the Egyptian Alphabet documents or in the Grammar and Alphabet volume." Restored.
• Roll length, one-sided. The draft said "the 41-foot figure is not the Church's figure." The Church's edition prints 150–156 cm in its own text but records Gee's ~1,300 cm estimate in the accompanying note. Corrected.
• Margin description, wrong. The draft said every page of the Kirtland manuscripts carries a ruled vertical line. The Joseph Smith Papers source note says the fourth page of Manuscript A has none. Corrected.
• Chandler certificate, loosely quoted. The draft had the certificate saying the translation "agreed 'in the most minute matters' with what he had learned from 'the most learned' in 'many eminent cities.'" The Joseph Smith Papers wording is "corresponded 'in the most minute matters' to other knowledge he had gleaned 'in many eminent cities . . . [from] the most learned.'" Corrected.
• "The majority of the papyri originally purchased in 1835 are missing," removed. This sentence was attributed to the Church's edition and could not be found there. Replaced with the edition's actual sentence, "The surviving papyrus fragments represent only a portion of the original collection."
• Facsimile 1, figure 12, expanded. The draft summarized figure 12 as "the firmament." The published key reads "Raukeeyang, signifying expanse, or the firmament over our heads."

Quotations deliberately NOT included

These are named in the article without quotation marks, because the source was not opened. None should be turned into a quotation without opening it.

• The 1842 Times and Seasons heading in its original spelling. The article uses Gee's rendering and says so.
• Warren Parrish's letter in the Painesville Republican, 1838. Quoted only as Gee prints it.
• Joseph Smith's journal entries for October and November 1835. Quoted only as Gee prints them.
• Joseph Smith's manuscript history. Quoted only as the Gospel Topics essay prints it.
• The Apocalypse of Abraham, Jubilees, Pseudo-Philo, and the rabbinic Abraham traditions.
• Josephus and Eupolemus on Abraham teaching astronomy.
• Kerry Muhlestein, Violence in the Service of Order.
• Kevin L. Barney, "The Facsimiles and Semitic Adaptation of Existing Sources."
• Hugh Nibley, The Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri, and Michael D. Rhodes's two papyrus editions.
• John A. Wilson and Richard A. Parker's 1968 identifications, and Franklin Spalding's 1912 pamphlet.
• The Leiden and London demotic magical papyrus.
• Attila Engin's Oylum Höyük reports and the Naram-Sin inscription naming Ulisum.