Does the Apocalypse of Abraham really corroborate the Book of Abraham?

[_Wraith]

I see some Mormons are using Nibley's analysis of the Apocalypse of Abraham as their personal evidence towards the translation of the Book of Abraham. Can someone guide me to a critical response to this claim? Thank you.

[_Fence Sitter]

Can you provide more information about where Nibley mentions it?

[_CaliforniaKid]

Here's a partial response I wrote several years ago:

In Hugh Nibley's book Abraham in Egypt (p. 21), he quotes the first-century pseudepigraphon The Apocalypse of Abraham in connection with the Book of Abraham's teaching about a council of pre-mortal spirits. In the Apocalypse, Abraham looks down from the sixth firmament and sees a picture of the earth spread out below him.

And I said, "O Eternal, Mighty One! What is this vision and picture of the creatures?" And He said to me, "This is my will for those who exist in the divine world-counsel, for thus it seemed well-pleasing in my sight, and so afterwards I gave commandment to them through my word. And so it came to pass that whatever I had determined to be, was already planned beforehand in this picture-vision before you, and it has stood before me before it was created, as you have seen."

It is understandable that readers with an LDS theological lens would see a pre-mortal council of spirits planning the creation here, but that is not what the author of the Apocalypse intended. The word "counsel" here refers not to a gathering of spirits, but to a plan or design-- a sort of "blueprint" for creation. In Middle Platonic philosophy, the material world was a shadow or derivative of the world of "forms"-- ideal, spiritual versions of material things. Philo, the great first-century Hellenistic Jewish theologian, interpreted Genesis 1 and 2 in light of this Platonic doctrine, so that Genesis 1 was understood as an ideal creation (Platonic forms) and Genesis 2 was understood as a material creation. The Jewish doctrine of pre-existence appears to have grown out of a similar application of Platonic philosophy to Jewish ideas. So read in the context of Hellenistic Judaism, the "world-counsel" in the Apocalypse of Abraham appears to be the Platonic world of forms.

So yes, like Philo, the Apocalypse of Abraham envisions a pre-creation creation. And yes, this is similar to Joseph Smith's cosmology in the Books of Moses and Abraham, which used a similar strategy to resolve the same contradictions between Genesis 1 and 2. But the Apocalypse of Abraham includes no "council" in which the spirits participate in planning and creating the earth.

These was an episode of Pinky and the Brain where they create "Chia Earth": a duplicate of the planet Earth created out of paper mache. They then convince all the humans to come over to Chia Earth to get free t-shirts, so they will be left to rule the real planet earth all by themselves. (In the end, the real planet earth gets destroyed and they vow to spend the night planning for the next day's attempt to take over Chia Earth. I love Pinky and the Brain.) I think Chia Earth thing makes a good analogy for what Abraham is looking at in the Apocalypse of Abraham. God makes it pretty clear that this isn't the material earth. Rather, it's the ideal plan after which the "paper mache," material earth will be patterned. It's a sandbox, where God figures out exactly what course he wants history to take prior to actualizing it in the material world. So He says of the vision, "This is my will for those who exist in the (divine) world-counsel... And it came to pass whatever I had determined to be, was already planned beforehand in this (picture), and it stood before me ere it was created, as thou hast seen."

This is actually a pretty deterministic vision of history. God explains, "Those who are on the left side are all those, born before your day and afterwards, some destined for judgment and restoration, and others for vengeance and cutting off at the end of the age. But those on the right side of the picture, they are the people who have been set apart for me, and whom I have ordained to be born of your line and called my people, even some of those who derive from Azazel." James Dunn considered election (i.e. determinism) such an integral part of 1st-century Judaism that he made it one of "four pillars of second temple Judaism". Arguably this is comparable to the Book of Abraham, where God says of some of the spirits, "These I will make my rulers." But the people of the Apocalypse of Abraham's world of forms don't appear to be premortal spirits or members of a divine council; they exist only as ideas in the mind of God, so any comparison will be somewhat strained. I also don't think Joseph Smith would have agreed with anything approaching determinism, however much he may have approved of fore-ordination.

In the Apocalypse, God explains that after creating his world-counsel he "gave commandment to them through my word." Basically what this means is that after God created his world of forms and decided he liked the way it had turned out, he "commanded" it into material being. The Apocalypse of Abraham expresses the Jewish understanding that God created the world through his "word", or logos: this, too, is good Middle Platonic doctrine.

So-- are there some parallels between the theology of the apocalypse and that of the Book of Abraham? There are a few, but the basic philosophical assumptions from which they spring are really quite different, perhaps even incompatible.

In sum, here's my view: Like the Jewish pseudepigraphers, Joseph Smith was an innovative interpreter of the Bible. By playing on obscure biblical texts, he developed a sophisticated hierarchy of beings, both spiritual and physical, and he rewrote the flow of salvation history. And like the Jewish pseudepigraphers, he gave his ideas added credibility by writing them into the biblical narratives and putting them in the mouths of figures like John, Moses, and Abraham. Joseph Smith noticed some of the same peculiarities in the biblical texts that Jewish pseudepigraphers had picked up on, and tried to explain them in similar ways. It is a credit to Joseph Smith that he so often reinvented interpretations that had historically been suggested by Jewish interpreters (even though in most of these cases he and they were equally wrong).

I'm convinced that the broad similarity of Joseph Smith's Book of Abraham to the Apocalypse of Abraham only demonstrates how timeless is this project of biblical revision, and how similar are the efforts of two imaginative, conservative interpreters trying to interpret the same obscure or contradictory biblical texts. I don't think there is anything in the Book of Abraham that makes it more at home in either 2000 BC or the first-century A.D. than in the 19th-century.

I'll just add that I find it intriguing that the apologists are willing to compare the Book of Abraham to fraudulent, Hellenized texts of the first century AD, which expanded upon biblical texts about Abraham some 2000 years after he lived. This doesn't seem like a propitious comparison for the Book of Abraham's authenticity. I suppose it's possible that some authentic, extra-biblical tradition about Abraham survived all that time to be recorded in the pseudepigrapha, but it's so vanishingly unlikely that it's hard to take this comparison as an indication of anything but that great religion-makers think alike.

[_Cicero]

I'll just add that I find it intriguing that the apologists are willing to compare the Book of Abraham to fraudulent, Hellenized texts of the first century AD, which expanded upon biblical texts about Abraham some 2000 years after he lived. This doesn't seem like a propitious comparison for the Book of Abraham's authenticity. I suppose it's possible that some authentic, extra-biblical tradition about Abraham survived all that time to be recorded in the pseudepigrapha, but it's so vanishingly unlikely that it's hard to take this comparison as an indication of anything but that great religion-makers think alike.

Parallelomania at its best . . . of course an apologist may look at your last sentence and say "no, it's an indication that God has revealed His truth to different people over the ages in distinct manners depending on their needs at the time, and Joseph Smith had the same truths revealed to him." I't's kind of like a "writ large" catalyst theory argument for Joseph's Smith role.

[_Wraith]

Can you provide more information about where Nibley mentions it?

Here's the link to the Nibley source I had in mind, I couldn't find it when I posted this thread. The topic just came up again, it seems every time the Book of Abraham discussion pops up the default response from the internet Mormons I'm in contact with is Nibley's correlation between this Apocalypse of Abraham and the Book of Abraham...which according to them is proof that Joseph Smith was divinely inspired.

http://maxwellinstitute.BYU.edu/publications/books/?bookid=48&chapid=286

Here's a partial response I wrote several years ago:

Thanks.

[_Fence Sitter]

I was browsing the MI site the other night for Book of Abraham stuff and came across a Glossary of Names put together by Gee that were relevant to Abraham. Seems that if you lived in Egypt from 200 BC to 300 AD and mention Abraham then you make his list of names that are relevant to Abraham.

On a side note you would think he would have taken down his "two inks" nonsense but it still is posted.