Criticism of Mormonism/Books/The Changing World of Mormonism/Chapter 11

Chapter 10

A FAIR Analysis of: The Changing World of Mormonism A work by author: Jerald and Sandra Tanner

Chapter 12

One of the major problems with all anti-Mormon efforts to disprove the divine origin of the book of Abraham is that they never look at the book of Abraham itself. They concentrate on showing that Joseph Smith's method of translation (as they envision it) could not possibly have worked, and yet they completely ignore the evidence of the text itself.
–Michael Rhodes^[1]

Claim

• Joseph claimed that the papyrus was written by Abraham himself.

Author's source(s)

•  ^[ATTENTION!]

Response

• Date of text vs. papyri

 ^{[needs work]}

Claim

• Hugh Nibley said that the papyri does not prove the Book of Abraham to be true and the LDS scholars were unprepared.

Author's source(s)

• Daily Universe, Brigham Young University, December 1, 1967
• BYU Studies, Winter 1968, pp.171-72 (Vol. 8, No. 2, Prolegomena to Any Study of The Book of Abraham")

Response

• Nibley was not of the opinion that scripture could be provided save by the Holy Ghost.
• Most scholars were "unprepared" because they had not prepared themselves to study Egyptian: "...a few faded and tattered little scraps of papyrus may serve to remind the Latter-day Saints of how sadly they have neglected serious education....Wholly committed and given fair warning, the Mormons have deserved even the unfair verdict that the world passed against them and the Prophet in 1912, when eight professional scholars condemned Joseph Smith's interpretations of the Facsimiles as utterly absurd; for had any of the Saints during the past century ever taken the pains to check up on the actual state of Egyptian studies in the world, it would have been an easy thing to show how abyssmally inept the performance of Dr. Spalding's panel of experts really was" (BYU Studies article cited by Tanners).
• Nibley himself was fairly well suited to a study of the papyri:

In reality, Dr. Nibley's first study of Egyptian was in 1927; he used it in his Ph.D. dissertation and in articles published in 1945, 1948, 1949, 1956, to mention but a few examples. In 1959, while on sabbatical leave at the University of California at Berkeley, Nibley became Klaus Baer's first student in Egyptian and learned Coptic at the same time. It was during the summer of 1964 that Nibley studied under both Baer and Wilson at the University of Chicago. When the papyri appeared, it had been forty years since Nibley's first introduction to Egyptian. If there was anything Nibley was relatively new at in 1968, it was Coptic, but he had even published in scholarly journals on texts in that language as well.^[2]

Claim

• Since the translation of the papyri was turned over to Hugh Nibley, this proves that the prophet does not have the ability to translate ancient records.

Author's source(s)

•  ^[ATTENTION!]

Response

• The Book of Abraham has already been given to us. Why would it need to be "retranslated"? Prophets only translate when no one else is able to do the job (2 Nephi 27꞉15-20).
• Nibley insisted that the papyri in the Church's possession were not the Book of Abraham.

Claim

• Facsimile 1 does not show Abraham fastened to an altar being sacrificed, but instead shows Hor being prepared for burial.

Author's source(s)

•  ^[ATTENTION!]

Response

• The authors are too quick to judge:

There are also a number of other ancient Egyptian texts that contain references to Abraham, including a recently discovered Egyptian lion couch scene like that of Facsimile Number 1 of the book of Abraham that explicitly mentions the name of Abraham. Anti-Mormon critics have been quick to point out the absurdity of associating Abraham with this pagan Egyptian scene, and yet now we have clear proof that this association is an ancient one. Again, these things have only been recently discovered, and Joseph Smith could not have known about them nor had access to them.^[3]

• Book of Abraham papyri (Long article) — Restoring gaps in the drawings

Claim

• LDS leaders were unable to detect the Hofmann forgeries. If they were really led be revelation, they should have been able to figure out that the documents were fake.

Author's source(s)

•  ^[ATTENTION!]

Response

•  Author(s) impose(s) own fundamentalism on the Saints
• Mark Hofmann

Claim

• "Mormon elder" Dee Jay Nelson, who claimed to be an Egyptologist, translated the papyri but was unable to find any mention of Abraham. Even though Nelson was later exposed to be a fraud, "This is not to say that his work has no merit."

Author's source(s)

•  ^[ATTENTION!]

Response

•  Absurd claim: the work was a fraud, and Nelson had no qualifications, but since it attacks the Church, Tanners aren't willing to dispense with it!

Claim

• Joseph Smith's "Egyptian Alphabet and Grammer" contain text that matches a portion of one of the papyri. Joseph Smith translated a "large number of English words" from each Egyptian character.

Author's source(s)

•  ^[ATTENTION!]

Response

• The Kirtland Egyptian Papers

Claim

• Joseph used four lines from the papyrus to generate 49 verses in the Book of Abraham.

Author's source(s)

•  ^[ATTENTION!]

Response

• The Kirtland Egyptian Papers

Claim

• The papyri have been dated to a much later time than Abraham, therefore they could not have been written by Abraham's "own hand on papyrus."

Author's source(s)

•  ^[ATTENTION!]

Response

• Date of text vs. papyri

Claim

• In Facsimile #1, the penciled-in restoration is incorrect.

Author's source(s)

•  ^[ATTENTION!]

Response

• Book of Abraham papyri (Long article) — Restoring gaps in the drawings

== Notes ==

1. [note]  John Gee, "A Tragedy of Errors (Review of By His Own Hand Upon Papyrus: A New Look at the Joseph Smith Papyri by Charles M. Larson," FARMS Review of Books 4/1 (1992): 93–119. off-site
2. [note]  Michael D. Rhodes, "The Book of Abraham: Divinely Inspired Scripture (Review of By His Own Hand upon Papyrus: A New Look at the Joseph Smith Papyri by Charles M. Larson)," FARMS Review of Books 4/1 (1992): 120–126. off-site
3. [note]  Michael D. Rhodes, "The Book of Abraham: Divinely Inspired Scripture (Review of By His Own Hand upon Papyrus: A New Look at the Joseph Smith Papyri by Charles M. Larson)," FARMS Review of Books 4/1 (1992): 120–126. off-site; citing John Gee, "Abraham in Ancient Egyptian Texts," Ensign 22 (July 1992): 60-62. off-site