Reddit reviews The Hor Book of Breathings: A Translation and Commentary (Volume 2) (Studies in the Book of Abraham)

I'm sorry, but can you source any of your claims?

>> but I wish someone who was a theologist/historian would talk about the Book of Abraham

Here is the documentary from your critic/secularist/historian

Here's your apologist/theologist and their rebuttal.

>> Really interesting story where a friend of Joseph Smith's asked him to translate some ancient papyri

Not really. A travelling showman asked Joseph if he could translate the papyri. Joseph said he could, and that they were the works of Abraham and Joseph (Biblical Joseph). He then leveraged the church body and purchased the scrolls. He spent a month in translation before parts were published in the church run press. Sources: Official History, Secularist History

>> It's widely believed to have actually been one or more of several other fairly common ancient Egyptian books, but a lot of the papyri were lost in a fire

This was an incorrect apologetic argument. The parchments were believed to have been lost in the fire, but a majority of the original parchment was found in 1966. This included the facsimiles. The parchment text contained text for the Book of the Breathings and book of the dead, as one could reasonably expect to find with a mummified Egyptian.

In fact, the theologan mentioned above translated these documents. He showed that they were in fact, Hor's Book of Breathings and other portions were from the Book of the Dead.

>> so the evidence is just patchy enough to keep some debate alive.

Not really. From a secularist perspective (see the documentaries above), the debate is closed. The book is a fraud. It was dated to a few hundred years AD, some 2000 years after Abraham lived and could not have been written by his hand as claimed. The facsimiles are incorrectly translated, and have been incorrectly recreated (for example, the human head that was drawn on Anubis in #1, or the Egyptian characters inserted upside down in #2)

Apologists will now usually fall to three theories (all unsupported save by their belief) - again, see the rebuttal to the documentary.

Theory 1 - The language we've translated is a bastardization of true Egyptian which Joseph spoke.

Theory 2 - The language was a means of inspiration and not a direct translation. This is countered by Joseph's own claims and dictionaries he put together.

Theory 3 - This was a copy of a copy of a copy and so Abraham wrote the original, but it was recopied and changed by future scribes. This theory claims Joseph restored the original and that is why it doesn't match up to modern Egyptian.

There are other problems as well that I won't go into unless requested.

Note the RLDS (reorganized LDS church, one of the primary 6 splinter groups after Joseph died) has not canonized this work. In fact, it was not canonized by the Brighimite branch (Main LDS church you know today) until the late 1800s.

[Edit] - fixed a link.

"Answers to Gospel Questions" was a collection of a column he was writing in the Ensign, wasn't it? I recall reading through this as a missionary, and mostly remember a lot of the racist stuff that was in it. It might be worth perusing again.

> Out of curiosity, what are the difficult questions you see? Have you found decent answers?

Honestly, I think that the biggest one is theism vs atheism. This is also the one that I've been pondering the longest. Studying some cosmology and evolution has led me to the position that life and the universe is possible without God. If the universe is too complex to exist without a creator, then is that creator also not too complex to exist without a creator? This is a question that I've been contemplating off and on for at least a decade. Reading C.S. Lewis and Timothy Keller have helped me see that there is reason in believing in God, and Joseph Campbell has helped me see meaning in belief--although I'm not entirely convinced that his mythic belief gives enough reason to actually believe. Experiences I've had have also helped give me reason to believe in God. Jesus Christ gives me more reason to believe in God than a concept of God by himself.

If I were to honestly evaluate my position on this question, I think that I would have to describe myself as an agnostic theist.

The next obstacle is the Bible, especially the literal view of all of it that Mormonism seems to require. I can't reject all reason and evidence to accept a literalist understanding of the Bible. Creation 6000 years ago, a global flood 4000 years ago, tower of babel, etc. don't jive with science/history. A lot of it seems to be etiological myth, not actual history--especially the Pentateuch. An allegorical view of these is possible and can easily be held with a view of biblical history (the history of the text, not the history recorded in the text). Enter Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. Now we have other scripture/locations which depend on a global flood or the tower of babel to be actual, literal events. We know from Joseph Smith's revelations that Lucifer was a fallen angel that took 1/3 of the hosts of heaven, but we don't teach that lucifer comes from Latin, literally means "light-bearer", and was referring to the King of Babylon. Using "Lucifer" as a proper name basically comes from a translation error by the It's also used to refer to the "Morning Star" which is also used to refer to Jesus.

Another issue is that a lot of Joseph Smith's revelations seemed really convenient. A traveling show comes to town with some mummies and papyrus? That papyrus just happens to contain writings by the hand of Abraham, and some from Joseph of Egypt. Those same papyri have been translated by BYU scholars and can be found here. Your men are discouraged on the Zion's Camp march? The skeleton you run across just happens to be Zelph, the famous white Lamanite general. You are moving to Missouri? Well, that's where the Garden of Eden was, where Adam built his altar after leaving the garden, and where Christ will return in the last days. You want to marry a girl and she rejects you and marries Henry Jacobs instead? An angel with a flaming sword comes and tells you that you will die if she doesn't marry you. Your first 116 pages of manuscript get lost? God knew it would happen and prepared for it in advance. You don't need to retranslate that, but there's a similar record that you can translate. You're restoring lost scripture to the Bible? That lost scripture contains very clear prophecies of you as a prophet.

I'm not saying that all of that is impossible, God could very well work like that. I'm just saying that it is very convenient.

Brigham Young. I'm not sure what I can say about him, but it seems that the worst of the false doctrine we have forgotten came from him. If somebody is dredging up some bit of crazy doctrine to attack us with, Brigham Young said it. He was a powerful theocrat and somehow ended up becoming extremely wealthy. When he died, it was quite difficult to separate his finances from church finances. Joseph Smith might have started polygamy, but Brigham Young institionalized it in a big way. The racism that has mostly died away since 1978 also seems to have started with him (not the priesthood ban itself so much as the doctrinalized rationalizations for the ban).

Another thing that troubles me is that we don't seem to have much revelation today. Presidently Hinckley said something along the lines of "We have a great body of revelation, most of which was received by Joseph Smith". If you listen to them describe it now, it sounds like they make decisions, pray about them, and then feel good. When was the last time you've heard anything like "thus sayeth the Lord".

Is the Book of Mormon a literal history? If I believe the Book of Mormon, then the American continents were populated by Jews starting around 600 BC. If I believe the historical and DNA records, then the American continents were populated by Asians starting around 150,000 BC. I know that apologists are saying that Lehi and family settled in an already populated area in the Southern Hemisphere (or in the Great Lakes area, or in Malaysia) and were basically swallowed up by the native population, but this feels more like moving the goalposts and rejecting just about everything Joseph Smith and succeeding church leaders have taught about the Book of Mormon. To top it off, the Book of Mormon quotes a lot of KJV text verbotim (or nearly so), including translation errors, and even some of Isaiah which was more than likely written well after Nephi had left Jerusalem. Nearly all of the plants and animals found in the Book of Mormon were post-Columbian, and the native plants and animals are not found in the Book of Mormon. Lehi and family leave after the commencement of the reign of King Zedekiah, but before the sacking of Jerusalem, but King Zedekiah was the puppet king installed by the Babylonian king after the sacking of Jerusalem.

Joseph Smith taught a lot of great things, and I see a lot of power in some of what he taught. Growing up I have always loved the gospel and the history. I have read the Book of Mormon many times, and I've even made it through the Old Testament several times (Ecclesiastes is my favorite). I am fascinated by LDS theology and history, and I'd love for it to be true. At the same time, I feel spiritually strangled and starved by Correlation. Even if it is true, it's almost painful to participate. I don't get much out of the super basic lessons, no matter how hard I try, and the culture, folk doctrines, and judgmentalism (a very human trait, I'm afraid) often drive me crazy.

I suppose that I'm in a similar situation to notsarge101. I'm tired, and going to church contributes to that tiredness rather than alleviates it, but mostly I want to know what is true more than I want to know that the faith tradition that I have grown up in and love is true. I will not make this decision lightly. I wish that I had more people I could discuss it with who didn't either a) consider me a heretic for thinking it or knowing some of the history, or b) consider me foolish for not rejecting the church.