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robuchan wrote:PS, I've seen Chris Smith referenced a lot and I watched his youtube reaction video where he does the awkward handshake with the interviewer. Where can I find Chris's material?

Bob Loblaw wrote:

robuchan wrote:PS, I've seen Chris Smith referenced a lot and I watched his youtube reaction video where he does the awkward handshake with the interviewer. Where can I find Chris's material?

http://chriscarrollsmith.blogspot.com/

robuchan wrote:
I've done some research on the length of scrolls issue. What is the best summary on that? How much do the critics think is missing and how much do the apologists think is missing?

robuchan wrote:I've done some research on the length of scrolls issue. What is the best summary on that? How much do the critics think is missing and how much do the apologists think is missing? And this should be understood in terms of the total amount or vs the total amount found. My take on that so far is that it doesn't matter because we've seen plenty (KEP and facsimiles) that did survive and they ain't what Joseph says they are.

Themis wrote:

robuchan wrote:
I've done some research on the length of scrolls issue. What is the best summary on that? How much do the critics think is missing and how much do the apologists think is missing?

Good luck with your studies. It can be a bit daunting. As to scroll length. Why does it even matter? We have some from different parts, and none of them contain anything about the Book of Abraham. We have the facsimiles and they don't translate into any Book of Abraham story. Why should it even be remotely possible there is some missing section that does contain the Book of Abraham story. It really smells of desperation. I think Chris and Mortal Man have done some good work in this area though.

robuchan wrote:.

I've read a little on what the apologists call hits on Abraham and apocryphic writings credited to Abraham, and I think I understand that issue well enough. Just like the Book of Mormon and the temple/masonry issues, you can find other contemporary sources that are more likely sources.

After attempting to explain away the dissonance between the evidence and the Book of Abraham,
Nibley tries to shift the focus by declaring that "it is the Book of Abraham that is on trial, not Joseph
Smith" and that Smith's "reputation must rest on the bona fides of the book, not the other way
around."44 And he issues the challenge: "Is [the Book of Abraham] an authentic autobiography of
Abraham the Patriarch, or is it not?"45
Efforts to establish the historical authenticity of the Book of Abraham face major obstacles. For
instance, even Nibley acknowledges that one means used to establish the authenticity of a document is
to compare it "with documents known to be authentic coming from that same time and place, and to
weigh the points of conflict or agreement among them."46 Assuming Abraham's historicity, there is no
agreement about when he would have lived.47 Nibley uses this advantageously, because he wants as
much latitude as possible, and accordingly postulates that Abraham could have lived anytime during a
comfortable span of two thousand years.48 Because there can be no way of discerning which documents
come "from that same time"--sometime within Nibley's two thousand years--it is impossible to make
any valid comparisons with the contents of the Book of Abraham.
These obstacles are ignored by Nibley, however, who is determined to "make up for the absence of
reliable dates to give us texts contemporary with Abraham" by accepting as valid any old documents
"actually bearing the name of Abraham."49 Thus by "the [p.230] study of parallels"50 he can refer to
documents which are temporally and/or culturally disparate in the extreme.51 Here is an illustration of
this commonly used "parallelomania"52 methodology in Nibley's writings.
To show how "typically Egyptian" the first several verses of the Book of Abraham are, Nibley
juxtaposes them against several quotations which range from the Egyptian Old Kingdom (2575 B.C.)
through the Christian Period, including quotations from Plutarch and Plato. In this manner, he asserts
that the Book of Abraham and Egyptian inscriptions "confirm and support each other."53
Unfortunately, this methodology does violence to the historical integrity of the documents used in the
Mormon CENTRAL - JOSEPH SMITH - LDS TEMPLES - BOOK ... http://user.xmission.com/~research/central/resscri3.htm
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manner described.
As with the writings of noted nineteenth-century British anthropologist James Frazer, there is a
"complete absence of historical consciousness"54 in the "parallel school" of Book of Abraham
apologetics. For it is an anathema to it to rely on a method that "insists that the essential requirement
for interpretation of a text is to read it in context: not merely in literary context, but in the wider,
deeper social and cultural context in which both author and audience lived, and in which the language
they employed took on the connotations to which the interpreter must seek to be sensitive."55

Fence Sitter wrote:
It is worth noting that the Book of Abraham, in its present form would require 8-12' of papyri written in hieratic text.