The Book of Abraham

Well, we do have the facsimiles. See here and Wikipedia

Here’s part of the problem:

Around the circumference of facsimile 2 there is a ring of characters. From about the 1:00 to the 4:00 position (as well as further into the circle) the papyrus was gone. Joseph Smith filled in that empty space with excerpts from a paragraph in another papyrus in his collection.

Wikipedia says:

Scholars and Egyptologists have also criticized Facsimile 2 for containing false reconstruction of lacunae, suggesting that Joseph Smith reconstructed portions of the vignette with characters from another papyrus.[47] Critics note that an incomplete version of facsimile 2 is found among the Kirtland Egyptian Papers, part of which are in the handwriting of Joseph Smith. Comparing the published version of Facsimile 2 with the version from the Kirtland Egyptian Papers and the newly rediscovered papyri, critics note that characters from the original papyri appear to have been used to fill in the missing portions of Facsimile 2, with some of the characters being upside down.[48]

Some Mormon apologists have proposed that the facsimiles were filled in to make the images more aesthetically pleasing, and have little to do with the actual interpretation of them[citation needed]. Others note that it is unclear if Joseph Smith himself filled in the facsimiles[citation needed], although he was the editor of Times and Seasons, the periodical in which the facsimiles first appeared, and as such would have approved any images that were included.

Valoel’s right about the book of Moses. That’s basically just JST stuff. I wonder how much of the BoA is the same. There are components to the story found in the Book of Abraham that are found in other sources that were only discovered subsequently, although they are all considered apocryphal (not scriptural, but mythological stories about Abraham). The facsimiles are the main complaint of critics, and frankly, my own personal belief is that they were “wishful thinking” on JS’s part to go with the story of Abraham rather than an actual translation. His translation process seems to have been more spiritual & inspiration-oriented and not a literal translation (in all cases, BOM included), although he clearly believed his translation would be identical to a character-for-character translation if examined by scholars.

I love the Book of Abraham – largely because I don’t believe it is a traditional “translation”. I just am compelled by its content and message.

Joseph was “a visionary man”. That’s the way he “translated” – and I personally think that’s pretty clear from the records we have. I’m tied much more to the Book of Mormon as a “correct/accurate” record of an actual people than I am to the Book of Abraham as such a record, but I see even the BofM as more of a “visionary transmission” than as a “literal translation”.

Many people are bothered that Joseph seemed to believe he was translating in the common definition – actually transcribing directly from one language to another. I’m not, for the same reason I actually like the fact that Joseph didn’t seem to understand much of what the BofM actually says. If he was the genesis of it (the “author” in a traditional sense), I think he would have “understood” it better. (Think of JK Rowling or Stephenie Myers. They know “Harry Potter” and “Twilight” backward and forward – in minute detail. It’s hard to picture them misunderstanding something any of their books say. I think there are lots of things Joseph didn’t understand, because, frankly, I don’t think he was focused on the details but rather on the prophetic gift to which the overall record pointed.)

Awesome post, Ray. I think there were more influences than any mortal can define or analyze, in the process of Joseph’s work with the BoM, BoA, BoM(oses) & JST. But even though I sometimes choose not to take literally some of the words therein, nevertheless I feel the ‘truth’ when I read them. I am convinced that Joseph truly communed with God, and even better, could produce something in the process that we all could share and benefit from. What a cool thing *that* is!

HiJolly

Orson, just to be clear about what I was saying, here’s what I know independent of any other person.

The outer ring characters on Facsimile 2 in my copy of The Pearl of Great Price between about the 1:00 and 4:00 positions are on close inspection obviously anomalous compared to the rest of the ring. The position of those characters corresponds to the missing portion of the papyrus that is extant. I, an observant lay person, can tell that those characters did not come from an intact ancient papyrus hypocephalus.

I have inspected scans of the paragraph-style papyrus fragments from which snippets of characters were copied to the 1:00 to 4:00 position of the outer ring. As an observant lay person, I can tell that these characters now presented in my copy of The Pearl of Great Price came from that separate source rather than from a Facsimile 2-like hypocephalus.

I have inspected scans of intact papyrus drawings similar to Facsimile 2, and I have seen that there are incongruous modern reconstructions in the area corresponding to the missing portion of the extant papyrus.

I conclude that the extant papyrus, with fillers in the outer ring from accompanying unrelated texts and reconstruction by inspiration in the sacrifice/embalming scene, was the source of our version of Facsimile 2.

It may be that we are missing portions of the texts use to fill in the outer ring characters. I don’t remember. It may also be that other papyrus sources for the Book of Abraham are missing. And it is remotely possible that the sacrifice scene was based on a fragment that was available to Joseph Smith. But any observant lay person can verify as I have that the extant Facsimile 2 papyrus is the actual Facsimile 2 source.

All this is important to illustrate the nature of the work of Joseph Smith.

Were you saying something else?

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6418671664626483056

At least two of the researchers/scholars are LDS, so both Mormon and Non- Mormon scholars agree on the papryi not being what many members led to believe it is.

The LDS scholars are Edward H. Ashment and Stan Larson.