Book of Abraham

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As I’ve concluded my LDS research for now I have come to the conclusion that the church has no connection to Christianity at all - although I do not doubt that many Mormons, ignorant of their faith, are indeed ‘Christians’.
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Hi ben-dy. I would like to say that I agree with your results, though my research “methodology” was somewhat different. Cheerio!

Caritas numquam excidit
Inter arma caritas
 
BJ Colbert:
That is just my view, of the devotion to Mary over Jesus Christ her Son. She was a virgin of great beauty and purity,and was chosen by God to be the Mother of His Son Jesus Christ, other than that the Bible does not elaborate on her life or her death. All other speculation is just that, Speculation.
BJ
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BJ,

I can assure you that worshipping Mary is not Catholic doctrine. Any Catholic that is more devoted to the BVM than Jesus is very misguided indeed. But, I think you already know that, or, at least you should if you have been paying any attention at all to the other posters in this forum.

As far as evidence of the Assumption of the BVM we have the absence of a tomb, which is very significant, and we have the tradition passed on to us by Christians who would have rather been burned alive than offer a pinch of incense to a pagan God. I’m amazed that so many LDS ignore the testimony of early Christian martyrs. I’m amazed that a person can believe that early Christians were so easily misled when the facts show many would rather die than change their beliefs. If we can’t trust the testimony of the early Christians, we can’t trust anyone’s testimony.
 
Maybe sounds a little bit like the Pope who decided Mary was assumed into heaven since he didn’t know where her body was after 100s of years. And since there were rumors and folk tales floating around, he as Pope had the power to make it official and since then all Catholics have believed this bit of folklore and made Mary the object of their devotion.
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I would give that to you if the Pope just came up with the dogma of the Assumption if he had some Egyptian or Chinese manuscript that he claimed he translated that told him that Mary was Assumed into heaven.

However, since that is not the case your example doesn’t work. There is something called Sacred Tradition, writtings from the Early Church Fathers, and even implicit Biblical backing.
Sounds like hokus pokus and nothing in the Bible to back it up. Simply the imaginations of man and the Pope to make it official. That is just my view, of the devotion to Mary over Jesus Christ her Son. She was a virgin of great beauty and purity,and was chosen by God to be the Mother of His Son Jesus Christ, other than that the Bible does not elaborate on her life or her death. All other speculation is just that, Speculation.
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Even if it were mere speculation, it would still be more legitimate than faulty translation from an Egyptian Book of the Dead. Where is the Lamanites and Nephites in the Bible?
 
Now, now…BJ has had some less than edifying experiences with her husbands parish so sometimes she’s a little sensitive. Let’s show her a little love and all will be well.
 
Would somebody mind providing a brief background on the Book of Abraham? I’m a neophyte in this area. In other words, what claims did SMith make for the papyri and is this book considered as part of the Mormons’ sacred scripture?
 
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edmondhall:
Would somebody mind providing a brief background on the Book of Abraham? I’m a neophyte in this area. In other words, what claims did SMith make for the papyri and is this book considered as part of the Mormons’ sacred scripture?
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This is from the introduction to the current version of “The Pearl of Great Price”. (which is considered canonized scripture by the LDS church and contains within it the Book of Abraham)

The Book of Abraham. A translation from some Egyptian papyri that came into the hands of Joseph Smith in 1835, containing writings of the patriarch Abraham. The translation was published serially in the Times and Seasons beginning March 1, 1842, at Nauvoo, Illinois. See History of the Church, vol. 4, pp. 519-534.

Beyond that I would invite you to do a quick search on Joseph Smith’s calims.

There is lively debate on just which pieces of papyrus were translated as this book. Joseph claimed it was written by Abrahams own hand but there is debate on what that really means.

Personally I think that the facsimiles contained within it are the only “proven” sources of what Joseph translated. The Book of Abraham currently contains them and lists a partial translation of them by Joseph Smith. I think that the current translations of these by egyptologists proves that Joseph could not and did not translate Egyptian correctly. I believe them to be pagan funeral documents only and Joseph’s claims to be false.
 
Thanks majick. So the first premise of Smith’s claim is that the Egyptians had in their possession writings from the very hand of Abraham? And these priceless writings ended up in in the hands of an American salesman, who in turn sold them to Smith?!
 
Yeah. That’s the claim. (although I did mention the debate on the meaning of “by his own hand”; some posit that they are copies of what he wrote himself and point out that no one disputes the fact that Abraham did spend time in Egypt where copies of his revelations could have been made, and buried with mummies.)

Of course you hear all the time about priceless art, letters, manuscripts, etc. being found at garage sales, in attics, etc. So I don’t know if that part is too unreasonable if you were to believe that God was helping to get the Papyrus in Joseph’s hands.

Some of the actual papyri were “rediscovered” by a museum and are now in the hands of the LDS church. (pictures are available all over the place)

LDS apologists have advanced theories as diverse as a “secret code” being in the egyptian funerary documents that contained the scripture, the documents being a mnemonic device associated with an oral tradition that was “revealed” to Joseph, that our understanding of Egyptian is just flat wrong and this is a literal translation, and of course the possibility that the papyri were just a “catalyst” and the scriptures were direct revelation from God.( I think that summarizes the main apologetic theories. You could check FAIR or FARMS websites to see if they have others.)
 
Thank you again. Following a cursory check of the message boards related to FAIR, I see someone made the claim that nobody (scholars) can read ancient Egyptian and so the interpretation is all a matter of faith. Is this a vaild rebuttal?
 
well, that is one of the theories I mentioned. I don’t see how anyone could consider that valid but apparently some folks do. I have been accused of not understanding English many times. 😃
 
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edmondhall:
Thank you again. Following a cursory check of the message boards related to FAIR, I see someone made the claim that nobody (scholars) can read ancient Egyptian and so the interpretation is all a matter of faith. Is this a vaild rebuttal?
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That is laughable. They need to do a web search on the Rosetta stone.
 
Looking a little further at the FARM site I see that one of the Mormon apologists (Nibley) claims that the papyri that have been evaluated by Egyptologists are the wrong ones–that the papyri purported to have been the bases for the book of Abraham have been lost (I think I’m interpreting this objection correctly). This ‘explanation’ sounds awfully convenient…how much credibility does it have from a reasonable perspective?

I apologize in advance for the elementary nature of these questions and if they simply repeat ground already covered on this forum…I’m new to this topic (Mormonism).
 
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edmondhall:
Looking a little further at the FARM site I see that one of the Mormon apologists (Nibley) claims that the papyri that have been evaluated by Egyptologists are the wrong ones–that the papyri purported to have been the bases for the book of Abraham have been lost (I think I’m interpreting this objection correctly). This ‘explanation’ sounds awfully convenient…how much credibility does it have from a reasonable perspective?

I apologize in advance for the elementary nature of these questions and if they simply repeat ground already covered on this forum…I’m new to this topic (Mormonism).
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Nibley was a pretty good scholar but even he admitted he was no egyptologist. Yes some apologists would have you believe (as I stated earlier) that the text of the book of Abraham was from a different fragment (scroll, etc.) of papyrus than what was “rediscovered”. You could make a pretty good case against that with other available evidence but you really don’t need to. You see, the facsimiles that are published in the current version of LDS scriptures within the Book of Abraham can be translated by real egyptologists to show a completely different meaning than what is published by Joseph Smith. You also have the original papyri that those scenes were taken from. It’s of interest that the damaged/missing pieces of those scenes on the papyri match up with the glaring errors in the facsimiles. (errors in form rather than translation)

Nibley was the one who in the end tried to claim that we just don’t know enough about the egyptian language to translate it correctly so you just have to take it on faith that Joseph Smith was inspired by God to write the Book of Abraham.
 
You see, the facsimiles that are published in the current version of LDS scriptures within the Book of Abraham can be translated by real egyptologists to show a completely different meaning than what is published by Joseph Smith.
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OK, gotcha. So, the ‘we don’t know enough about egyptology’ or ‘Smith was using a secret code’ explanations are really the only avenues available. Interesting! Thanks again.
 
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