TBOA:what is scripture?

The BoA was a very big issue for me. One of my biggest questions was how can the BoA remain as scripture? Knowing what we now know, why not remove it from the standard works? The embarrassment factor? The best apologist explanations that stuck with me with respect to the BoA were:

1) The Jewish redactor theory – at one stage I ran with that idea and thought that perhaps there was no Jewish redactor and JS was acting as a LDS redactor. So what does that mean? Some neat hieroglyphics came across JS’s desk, he had a fascination with them (he did appear to have a fetish for all things Egypt), maybe there was even some social pressure placed on him to translate, and JS used the papyri as a tool to incorporate additional truths he was discovering from other sources along the way. I find it interesting that JS was all about study and circumscribing all truth into one great whole and now we’re a church that’s been all but locked down. We’ve already got the Truth™ so there’s no need to extend ourselves. Revelation (in the sense of trying to incorporate more and more truths from external sources into the church) appears to be all but dead.

2) There’s lots of evidence that JS had access to much more papyri than what was recovered/to be found in the facsimiles, meaning perhaps the source of the book was other, non-extant papyri. Of course this ignores the incorrect interpretations directly applied to the facsimiles found in the BoA. It also ignores the arguments related to the Kirtland Egyptian papers coming across as an incorrect attempt at a 1:1 translation of the material found in the facsimiles.

So basically, I’m trying to find a way in all of this for me to stay believing in TBOA, since not believing in it will have a lot of negative consequences to my belief about other scripture in the church.

I don’t know what the best path is but in my case I allowed my issues with the BoA to have said negative consequences to my belief in all other scriptures. To be honest that approach was more liberating than I thought that it would be. My personal takeaway was that I can find inspiring things from various sources like The Chronicles of Narnia, LOtR, Pixar movies, etc.; sources of inspiration aren’t limited to only what can be found in a quad. The flip side of that coin has also been liberating, I can now ignore the things that do not inspire me… even in cases where said things come from within the quad. The latter was my new takeaway, I can now look past the BoA if and when I need to.

I believe that, for instance the old testament is mixed with a lot of fiction because of its ancient origin…

Well, look at it this way… one day in the distant future the BoA will have ancient origins. It’s really no different from any other scriptures other than it just so happens to have been written in relatively modern times so we are more intimately familiar with its origins. Perhaps if Isaiah was a recent historical figure we’d take more issue with the methods he employed to arrive at the material attributed to his name instead of giving him a free pass.

Why should one be consider scripture and the other not?

The members voted unanimously on what would be binding as standard works/scripture. IMO that’s the difference between the BoA and Narnia. Who knows, if Narnia ever comes up for a vote…

But to be a bit serious again, I had to get to a place where I could let go of my issues with the BoA in order to be happy again. My thoughts are a bit disheveled, what I currently believe is in there somewhere and I’m sure it will change with time.

Though I have heard the word many times I don’t understand it (due to me being Danish;) what exactly does it mean (I’m just thinking of a rash, somewhere in the middle of something…)

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So what are you suggesting? Could you spell it out for those of us who haven’t delved into this before? How does midrash apply to TBOA?

So to cut it short: divine fiction? That’s just so hard for me to accept though…

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…what is the difference between a fantasy novel about Christ (say Narnia for instance) and Tboa/Tbom? Why should one be considered scripture and the other not?

The purposes of any church will obviously dictate what works receive special status within the organization, but for me personally when I ask the question:

Why should one be considered scripture and the other not?

I wonder – shouldn’t I accept all truth for truth? …all goodness for good? Should I embrace all lessons that have a component of divinity for the benefit of that component in my life?

If I receive all good from any source for the benefit that it contains, am I personally served by holding some sources above others for any reason other than the quality of its good? If I seek the spirit as I study wouldn’t all study benefit me based on the “good” component of the material itself? Should I rate the quality before or after my study?

For me because I recognize all scripture comes through an imperfect human filter I am not too hung up on official canonization. I do recognize in my conversations that canonized scripture will carry more weight in some settings, but for my personal study I see God in all good things no matter the status.

I know others disagree, just don’t take away my positive fruit because you do.

Wonderfully worded – and it applies to us with regard to how we interact with others as much as it does to others and how they interact with us.

These issues dealing with TBOA has troubled me lately so I have done some research by Micheal Ash of FAIR and others to resolve these especially considering the doctrinal value of Pearl of Great price. I will give a summarized version of the LDS apologetics response to evidence against. I think there is some things that have to be remembered here with TBOA. First, only 13% of the scrolls the JS had only 13% of the material survived the fire of the Chicago museum or where destroyed elsewhere according to John Gee of Farms. The scroll for TBOA, or scroll or Horos, was calculated to be 10 ft and 8 times longer than would survived. Critics claim that the Horos scroll is like any sensen scroll or Documents of breathing by Isis. However, John Gee also points out that JS had a lion-couch vignette which made it unique and of the Facsimilies, or pictures that we have in TBOA, it would be hard to find a parallel. It is more than likely that the part that JS translated for TBOA is gone. Critics have a hard time accepting that an Egyptian funeral pictures would be related to scriptures about Abraham. As mentioned earlier, it is not unlikely that a Jewish redactor used Egyptian funeral facsimiles and converted them over to convey Hebrew scripture according to research done by Kevin Barney of Farms. There have been a number of examples where Egyptian information was crossed over to convey Hebrew scripture. For example, it is believed that an ancient Egyptian book the Instructions of Amenemope was the source for some of the Book of Proverbs, and that the story of Lazarus in Luke 16 was adapted from a Hebrew legend where Abraham was actually substituted for the Egyptian God Osiris. Some sensen scrolls had other writing attached to them, and in more than one instance writings have been found that have Egyptian on one side and Hebrew on the other such as a Egyptian temple archive attached to the prayer of Jacob and the eighth book of Moses. Facsimile 1 does not correspond to the Book of Abraham when just taken for a funeral scroll, but it does fit the Book of Abraham when viewed through how 2nd century B.C. Hebrews would have looked at or converted over the images in it. The Egyptians identified the figure on the table as Osiris, but they also converted Osiris for Abraham or Abel. So this JS interpretation when crossed does work out. JS intepreted the wavy line underneath as the expanse of Heaven, which Egyptologist say is incorrect, but this does work for a Hebrew view of this facsimile. The Hebrews believed that Heaven was a dome sitting atop a pillar of the celestial ocean, which the with the columns is not hard to imagine here. The Kirtland Egyptian papers were not written by JS but his scribes. It is likely that these translations, that were incorrect were written after TBOA was written or backwards translated, and that the translation was wrong from the early saints possibly because the Book of Abraham refers to the Vignette at the beginning of this record, to the early saints this would indicate that the record of Abraham was part of the early portion of the scroll and thus they began their backwards translation from this point. In reality, however, “this record” probalby referred to the beginning of Abrahamic text, which would have been appended to the Sensen scroll. Some things to keep in mind with translation is that according to JS, God did not give a deciphering key to decipher with, like Egyptologist had with the rosetta stone. JS translated by inspiration. With the plates at times JS translated without even having the plates right in front of him. JS did not know egyptian and never learned, he simply translated the portion God wanted him to. The fact that he or his translator did not back translate the right words to the right characters at a later day for their own curiosity or purposes, does not mean that when JS translated the actual BOA, that is was not by the power of God. A more telling quality of TBOA is its comparision to the Testament of Abraham and also the Egyptian book of the Dead. It is widely recognized that a judgement scene in the testament of Abraham was influenced by an Egyptian psychotasy or soul weighing papyrus. The connection is so clear that the author could have been looking at the papyrus when he penned his account. The testament of Abraham author makes the change of Egyptian characters to semitic figures. The Egyptian god Osiris becomes angels and the other Egyptian gods become angels. TBOA talks about the Celestial objects highest above the earth, which is similiar to what is found in the Apocalypse of Abraham. Recent research of ancient Abrahamic lore and traditions show surprising parallels in early traditions of Abraham life between TBOA and the testament of Abraham and the Apocalypse of Abraham according to Tvedtnes, Hauglid and Gee and also another paper by Nibley. JS would not have had access to these in his date. In addition TBOA shows a geocentric view of the earth, everything revolving around the earth, similar to how the Apocalypse of Abraham does, in contrast to the Newtonian concept of the universe in JS day of the earth being heliocentric, everything revolving around the son. I know this is not perfect evidence to answer all gaps in TBOA and what egyptologists have charged against it. Lack of evidence is not the same thing as evidence against something. BH Roberts had a lot unanswered questions about the BOM that could not be answered in his day, but today many of the those such as wheat, mammoths, weights and measures and technology of the American inhabitants, etc. Have shown these are things are not unreasonable to have happened. We do not have all the answers for the disconnects of egyptology, but time may give better explanations and research shows that information in TBOA is too paralleled to recent Abrahamic docs to be just coincidence.