What to do about the Book of Abraham?

I am providing here a link to a discussion on The Book of Abraham on the blog ‘Skeptical Mormon’. At the beginning of this post you will find a you tube type video about the Book of Abraham. I saw this video a number of years ago, which I rented from the ‘shelf of Mormon related video material’ at the public library that I mentioned in an earlier post. The video is packaged in such a way as to make it unclear at first glance as to what position it will take on the authenticity of the Book of Abraham. Be for warned that the position it takes is that the Book of Abraham is a fake. In fact I would classify this video as perhaps the most effective ‘anti-Mormon’ presentation I have every seen. This is in part do to what I remember as a reasonable sounding tone, but also do to the evidence provided. The most damning of which is a document written by Joseph Smith, that attempts to make explicate the translation of the Book of Abraham text from the papyri the Church purchased from a traveling showman in 1835.

It is from this papyri that the Book of Abraham is generally said to have derived within the LDS Church. In fact Joseph Smith made this point fairly explicate. The document I referenced earlier contains various symbols, or hieroglyphics from the papyrus on one side, followed by the supposed translation there of on the other. In this case you have one symbol, followed by roughly a paragraph worth of ‘translated text’ ‘derived there from’. “This looks pretty ridicules”, was my first though upon watching the video, in oh about 2003. It still looks ridicules, particularly in light of the fact that we now have translation of the same material from qualified Egyptologists. Let me explain:

Over course of time the ‘Joseph Smith Papyri’ became lost from the Church. It at one point was widely believed to have been destroyed in the great Chicago fire of the 1870’s. However in the 1960’s the Papyri were discovered in the possession of the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, who turned them over to the Church in 1967 (they are now presumably in the Church archives). Anyway this discovery doubtless generated some excitement within the Church, particularly over the prospect that the text might be translated by others thus confirming the Joseph Smith translation. This however was not to be, as the ‘Book of Abraham Papyri’ is in fact a copy of the rather common Egyptian funereally text known as the ‘Book of the Dead’.

The Papyrus that Joseph Smith had was torn along several of the illustrations now included in the Pearl of Great Price. When these torn fragments are lined up along side more well preserved copies of the Book of the Dead, we find differences between the original illustrations and those now included among the Mormon cannon. The torn out areas in the Mormon text have had the illustrations completed by another hand in ways that more clearly line up with the Book of Abraham narrative, while the original illustrations look quite logically more Egyptian. The best example of this comes from Illustration # 1, where the figure that is identified in the PoGP as "The Idolatrous priest of Elkenah" turns out to in fact be the jackal headed Egyptian God Anubis.

The discovery of the ‘Book of Abraham Papyri’ has resulted in considerable rethinking of the text on the part of a number of Latter-day Saints, particularly those involved in apologetics. In order to explain why the text does not match up with the translation a number of theories have been proffered. The first I refer to as the ‘Bible Code Theory’, one which was advanced, or at least mentioned by, a senior missionary and former BYU religion professor I knew in Tennessee. This theory, like the so-called ‘Bible Code’, proposes hidden meaning within an existent text. In other words, it is translatable as one thing, but ‘hidden between the lines’ is another more esoteric meaning. This theory of course seems more then a little bit of a stretch, though that self same professor informed me that the Egyptians were notorious for layering meaning within a text. I have no further supporting information for this contention however.

The second and perhaps more popular meaning, at lest among many current Mormon apologist, is that the papyri served as the inspiration, rather then the source material for the Book of Abraham. According to this theory Joseph Smith's contemplation of the acquired papyri, would have inspired God to revel to him the contents of a missing account of Abrahams life, that is at lest tangentially related to ancient Egypt. The illustrations or facsimiles would have been filled in by Joseph or some one else for any number of reasons, perhaps simply to provide compelling and authentic seeming visuals to accompany the story.

Now none of these takes on the Book of Abraham is as satisfying as a direct translation would be. However if we grant the authenticity of the ‘rediscovered’ Papyri as being the same which belonged to Joseph Smith, as most do, then we are seemingly left in this predicament. So what are we to do about the Book of Abraham? I do not know, and have thus left the issue long upon a mental backburner, concentrating instead on other matters. But as this matter has been brought up again by my reading, perhaps now would be a good time to take a second look at the controversy, and the disturbing possible implications it offers. Now this is the first time on this blog, or possibly anywhere, that I have brought up an issue so seemingly damning to (at least certain) Mormon truth claims as this one. Let me try and emphasis that I do so in good faith. I am a practicing and largely committed Latter-day Saint, but I can not deny new sources of (seemingly) legitimate information just because they are inconvenient or I do not like them, or prefer that they were not true, ect. I must at some point, as must all who come in contact with this information to some degree, deal with it. So I open up in the comment section room for responses from all quarters as to the question, what are we to do with the Book of Abraham?