Does the Book of Abraham Prove that Joseph Smith was a False Prophet?
In 1835, Joseph Smith and members of the Mormon Church in Kirtland, Ohio, purchased some papyrus scrolls and mummies from a traveling showman named Michael Chandler. Joseph Smith had realized that some of the scrolls, but not all, contained writings by the ancient biblical prophet Abraham. Over the next few years, whenever he had free time, Joseph Smith translated portions of the text and eventually published it as the Book of Abraham in 1842. When the Mormons were expelled from Illinois in 1846 after Joseph Smith’s murder, the mummies and papyrus remained behind and were eventually lost. This book has become very controversial among critics of the Mormon Church who claim that the Book of Abraham could not have come from those papyri as Joseph Smith claimed. In the 1960s a few fragments of the original papyri were found in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and given back to the Mormon Church. They have since been published and studied, but they are not, unfortunately, the
