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William W. Phelps and Warren Parrish Copy of Abraham Manuscript, Summer–Fall 1835 [Abraham 1:1–2:18]

	of thy body,) shall all the families of the earth be blessed, even with the blessings of the gospel, which are the blessings of salvation, even of life eternal. [blank line]
H	Now after the Lord had withdrew from speaking to me, and withdrew his face from me, I said in my hea rt thy servant has sought thee, earn nestly, now I have found thee, thou didst send thine angel to delivr me, from the gods of Elkkener, and I will do well to hearken, unto thy voice, ther efore let thy servant arise up and depart in peace so I Abram departed, as the Lord had said unto me, and Lot with me, and I Abram was sixty and two years old, when I departed out of Ha ran.
H	And I took Sarai, whom I took to wife in Ur of Chaldeea wife when I was in Ur, in Chaldeea, and Lot my brothers Son, and all our substance, that we had gathered, and the souls that we had won in Haran, and came forth in the way to the land of Canaan, and dwelt in tents, as we came on our way, there fore eternity was our covering, and our rock, and our salvation, as we journ eyed, from Haran, by the way of jersh Jurshon, to come to the land of can aan.

[p. 9]

As discussed in the general introduction to the Book of Abraham manuscripts on this website, JS and his scribes Oliver Cowdery

3 Oct. 1806–3 Mar. 1850. Clerk, teacher, justice of the peace, lawyer, newspaper editor. Born at Wells, Rutland Co., Vermont. Son of William Cowdery and Rebecca Fuller. Raised Congregationalist. Moved to western New York and clerked at a store, ca. 1825–1828...

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, William W. Phelps

17 Feb. 1792–7 Mar. 1872. Writer, teacher, printer, newspaper editor, publisher, postmaster, lawyer. Born at Hanover, Morris Co., New Jersey. Son of Enon Phelps and Mehitabel Goldsmith. Moved to Homer, Cortland Co., New York, 1800. Married Sally Waterman,...

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, Frederick G. Williams

28 Oct. 1787–10 Oct. 1842. Ship’s pilot, teacher, physician, justice of the peace. Born at Suffield, Hartford Co., Connecticut. Son of William Wheeler Williams and Ruth Granger. Moved to Newburg, Cuyahoga Co., Ohio, 1799. Practiced Thomsonian botanical system...

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, and Warren Parrish

10 Jan. 1803–3 Jan. 1877. Clergyman, gardener. Born in New York. Son of John Parrish and Ruth Farr. Married first Elizabeth (Betsey) Patten of Westmoreland Co., New Hampshire, ca. 1822. Lived at Alexandria, Jefferson Co., New York, 1830. Purchased land at...

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spent considerable time in the second half of 1835 engaged in two separate yet related endeavors: the translation of the Book of Abraham, which yielded several Abraham manuscripts; and a language-study effort that produced a number of Egyptian alphabet and grammar manuscripts. Both types of manuscripts exhibit connections to the papyri in JS’s possession and, according to the historical record, both projects occurred roughly concurrently. However, there is presently not enough information to definitively ascertain how these two projects are related to each other or to the revelatory process. The particular text featured here, consisting of a draft of what is currently designated Abraham 1:1−2:18, was inscribed by William W. Phelps and Warren Parrish, apparently between mid-1835 and late-spring 1836.

Phelps

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’s hand appears on the first twenty-one lines on the initial page, with Parrish

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’s handwriting on the remainder of the document. Phelps evidently copied this text from an earlier Book of Abraham document that is no longer extant (Hauglid, Textual History of the Book of Abraham, 7, 58−59). His contribution, covering passages now associated with Abraham 1:1−3, is not paragraphed but is lightly edited and punctuated and has three hieratic characters appearing in the left margin.

Warren Parrish

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began copying a text he had worked on earlier (see Warren Parrish Copy of Abraham Manuscript, Fall 1835 [Abraham 1:4–2:2]) onto the first page sometime after Phelps

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’s entry, probably between 29 October 1835, when he was called to be a scribe for JS, and spring 1836, when he left Kirtland

Located ten miles south of Lake Erie. Settled by 1811. Organized by 1818. Population in 1830 about 55 Latter-day Saints and 1,000 others; in 1838 about 2,000 Saints and 1,200 others; in 1839 about 100 Saints and 1,500 others. Mormon missionaries visited township...

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, Ohio, on a mission to Tennessee (Hauglid, Textual History of the Book of Abraham, 22, 110; JS, Journal, 29 Oct. 1835; Woodruff, Journal, 19 Apr. 1836). He began his portion of Abraham’s account where Phelps left off and produced a draft of the text of what is now referenced in Latter-day Saint scripture as Abraham 1:4−2:18. Parrish’s nine and one-third pages of transcription is paragraphed and punctuated, with twenty-five hieratic characters in the left margin.

The Phelps

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/Parrish

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manuscript was probably available for reference when the Book of Abraham was prepared for publication in the Times and Seasons in Nauvoo

Principal gathering place for Saints following expulsion from Missouri. Beginning in 1839, LDS church purchased lands in earlier settlement of Commerce and planned settlement of Commerce City, as well as surrounding areas. Served as church headquarters, 1839...

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, Illinois, beginning with the 1 March 1842 issue. It was in the possession of JS’s widow Emma Smith Bidamon

10 July 1804–30 Apr. 1879. Scribe, editor, boardinghouse operator, clothier. Born at Willingborough Township (later in Harmony), Susquehanna Co., Pennsylvania. Daughter of Isaac Hale and Elizabeth Lewis. Member of Methodist church at Harmony (later in Oakland...

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at the time of her death in 1879. The document was inherited by Emma’s second husband, Lewis Bidamon, and at his death by his son Charles, who sold it to collector Wilford Wood in summer 1937. Subsequently that same year, Wood donated the document to the Church Historian’s Office, now the Church History Library (Wilford Wood, Woods Cross, UT, to Heber J. Grant, Salt Lake City, UT, 24 Dec. 1837, microfilm, Wilford Wood, Collection of Church Historical Materials, CHL; Hauglid, Textual History of the Book of Abraham, 110−111; Peterson, Story of the Book of Abraham, 229).

Note: When an Egyptian hieratic character appears on the manuscript, it is represented by a stylized “H” in the transcript. The transcript of the Book of Abraham excerpt presented here is used with permission of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship. It was published earlier, with some differences in style, in Brian M. Hauglid, A Textual History of the Book of Abraham: Manuscripts and Editions (Provo, UT: Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, Brigham Young University, 2010), 66–81.

Facts

Editorial Title: William W. Phelps and Warren Parrish Copy of Abraham Manuscript, Summer–Fall 1835 [Abraham 1:1–2:18]
ID #: 7643