What if there was no Book of Abraham?

[_MrStakhanovite]

Book of Abraham is one of those classic cases of an American religious movement that came out of Adventism and whose own well documented craziness is on display for the world to see. It’s akin to the slam dunks against Jehovah Witness prophecies and Ellen G White’s own brand of weirdness.

[_Themis]

Yes, but I think we need to consider the possibility that they didn't necessarily start that way. If you are an intelligent and educated person, brought up LDS, and you start looking seriously at Book of Abraham apologetics, you are forced to stretch your mind more and more to find room for the bizarre and improbable concepts that are needed in order to make some wiggle room for belief.

At each step, you remind yourself that the Church is True (isn't it?), and stretch a little further. By the end of it, your sense of what is intellectually honest is so bent out of shape that you cease to feel uncomfortable with stuff that makes any unprepared (whoops, sorry, 'intellectually naïve and literalist') person gape with astonishment.

But in some, the process of distortion and the discomfort it caused seems to leave a legacy of pain and anger, and that has to go somewhere. A good target is of course any critic who reminds the apologist of just how far his intellectual standards have moved away from what he would once have considered normal.

I think you are right. I see this with some now, how they will look for anything that can help them maintain belief. What's interesting is that those who have more objectivity and maybe even integrity who can not go down this road from the beginning are the ones who get demonized.

[_Themis]

Totally agree with you. Not only does it give us insight into Joseph's mind and interests, it outlines some of the crucial doctrines of the LDS church: premortal life and the plan of salvation, for example. It is indeed important, which is why I think some people feel the need to defend its antiquity.

If he had done it like he did with the Book of Moses the church today would have a lot less problems, but he would have lost his prop which was effective back then.

[_BartBurk]

If there were no Book of Abraham the LDS Church would have a whole lot less xplainin to do. The Book of Abraham undermines the credibility of the Book of Mormon.

[_Fence Sitter]

Book of Mormon, Book of Commandments, Book of Abraham, Book of Joseph, Book of David Whitmer, Book of Sidney Rigdon. It is too bad they didn't continue with the series. I would've enjoyed the "Book of Rigdon"

I can't find the reference just right now, but I am pretty sure this is a list of the "Book of ..." projects that were going to be or were already written.

[_Daheshist]

The four sons of Horus do in fact represent the four corners of the compass. Of course, Joseph Smith could have been guessing and had a lucky guess on that one. Also, he could have gotten that from Michael Chandler, who did in fact study up on Egyptology, which was in its infancy, to try to understand his inheritance.

As I was driving back from lunch, I thought of all the apologetic arguments about the Joseph Smith papyri and whether they would be an issue had the papyri not been translated.

Would there be any question as to the content of the scroll? If discovered in the condition Joseph Smith found it in, would anyone contest that the papyri were funerary scrolls with a specific translation and purpose?

Would anyone wonder what was missing in the lacunae? Given that the scenes depicted are common, would anyone think to have inserted a round head where Anubis's jackal-head should be or have copied text from elsewhere to fill in the gaps?

Would anyone argue that the embalming scene was actually an attempted human sacrifice?

Would anyone be arguing that the facsimiles represented scenes from the life of Abraham?

Would anyone suggest that the canoptic jars depicted represent the four corners of the world?

Would there be a debate about the length of the missing portion of the scroll? These are common scrolls with known content, so what reason would there be for arguing for 41 feet of missing scroll?

Would anyone feel the need to relocate "Ur of the Chaldees" or attempt to make that description fit in the time period of Abraham?

It seems pretty obvious that the only reason these rather convoluted explanations have come about is that what we have in the Book of Abraham does not come from the papyrus, even though Joseph Smith said it did. The incongruity has spawned the missing scroll theory, the catalyst theory, and the cipher-key theory.