Reading Charles Larson's "...By his own hand upon papyrus" was the final straw for me, about 7 years ago this summer. Today I got a copy of Robert K. Ritner's "The Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri", the only scholarly translation of the papyri to date (Ritner is a real, non-Mormon Egyptologist).

I'm on page 2 now, and already Ritner made minced meat of Joe's lies about the cost of the original papyri, about who put up the dough, Joe's "conflation of Egyptian and Greek", and John Gee's faulty interpretation (a.k.a. apologetic lie) of the name Su-e-eh-ni (Gee misses the mark on phonetics as well as grammar).

Glancing over page 3, I see that the name Potiphar cannot possibly have existed in the time frame that Abraham is supposed to have lived, that "Egyptus"is anglicized Latin and not Chaldean, as Joe claimed, and that Joe's rendering of a Chaldean passage is incompetent, misunderstood, misrepresented, wrongly transliterated and made up.

Note that I am talking about pages 2 and 3 in the book, not 20 and 30. This is going to be good...

Thanks for reminding me to get that book.

I would like to buy a book about the Book of Abraham so I can easily show the Mormons in my life why i don't believe Joseph Smith was a prophet. Which book do you prefer? "By his own hand upon papyrus" or "The Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri? Or are their other recommendations?

Charles Larson's book is on-line for free at

http://mit.irr.org/category/book-of-abraham

There are some more informative resources on the BOA on that site.

You can also point your Mormon friends to videos such as

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcyzkd_m6KE

Anonananana Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I would like to buy a book about the Book of
> Abraham so I can easily show the Mormons in my
> life why i don't believe Joseph Smith was a
> prophet. Which book do you prefer? "By his own
> hand upon papyrus" or "The Joseph Smith Egyptian
> Papyri? Or are their other recommendations?

I would recommend Larson's book, as it deals with the issues more directly. Ritner's book is primarily a legitimate translation of the Joseph Smith papyri.

When he published his early paper "The Breathing Permit of Hor," I was in the middle of debating the BOA's authenticity with some Mopologists on alt.religion.mormon. Ritner's paper demolished Joseph Smith's "interpretations" as well as the defenses by Mopologists such as John Gee. Here's my ARM post from 2003 quoting Ritner's paper:

Readers,

In case some of you are unable or unwilling to read Egyptologist Robert
Ritner's paper "The Breathing Permit of Hor," here are a few of the most
informative excerpts:

"A customary scholarly request to examine the original Joseph Smith Papyri for
this publication was refused by Steven R. Sorenson, Director of LDS Church
Archives."---Page 161.

"Facsimile No. 2, Explanation. Attempts to salvage these pseudo-Egyptian
transcriptions reach desperate levels in suggestions by current apologists
Michael Rhodes and John Gee....."---page 161, note 3.

Referring to Hugh Nibley's series of articles in the 'Improvement Era' in 1968:
"Nibley undercuts this 'appeal to authority' by a series of personal
attacks...Nibley's logic is peculiar in these tracts circulated only among the
faithful...Nibley wants a sympathetic audience, not Egyptological fact. The
August 1968 continuation [of Nibley's articles] derides the careers of T.
Deveria, J. Peters, A. C. Mace, A. M. Lythgoe, G. Barton, E. Banks, and E.A.W.
Budge.
Nibley's tactic has been adopted by his followers. The earlier version of this
article produced internet discussions devoted not to the translation, but to
scurrilous remarks concerning my own religious and personal habits. Let the
scholar be warned."---Page 162, note 7.

"With the regard to the articles by my former student John Gee, I am
constrained to note than unlike the interaction between Baer and Nibley, and
the practice of all my other Egyptology students, Gee never chose to share
drafts of his publications with me to elicit scholarly criticism, so that I
have encountered these only recently. It must be understood that in these apologetic writings, Gee's opinions do not necessarily reflect my own, nor the
standards of Egyptological proof that I required at Yale or Chicago."---p. 167.


Page 168, footnote 41, where Ritner states that "the most reasonable
explanations of the vignettes" [facsimiles] were done by Klaus Baer, Edward
Ashment, and Stephen Thompson---not Nibley, Gee, or Rhodes.

"Human sacrifice in
Egypt was rare and more political execution, never depicted as on the altered
Book of Abraham rendition of P JS I.....The early assessments of this material
by Egyptologists Breasted, Petrie, Mercer, et al. solicited by Spalding in 1912
remain valid in 2003, despite ad hominem attacks by Nibley, cited by Gee....."

Page 172, note 88: "My citation of the available image of P JS IV should not be
construed as an endorsement of Nibley's scholarship, contra the implications of
Gee....."

Nibley had asserted that Egyptologist Klaus Baer had written him that the
vignette depicted in Facsimile 3 "is not a judgment scene." Nibley and other
Mopologists misrepresent Baer's statement and used it to support Joseph Smith's
claim that the vignette depicted a human sacrifice. But Ritner explains:

"Baer's statement that it is 'similar to but not identical with scenes showing
judgment of the deceased before Osiris'..... and 'is not a judgment
scene'.....means only that the actual process of judgment is not shown. This
image *does*, however, form part of standard judgment scenes."---page 175, note
122.

Page 176, note 128, regarding: "Stephen E. Thompson, 'Egyptology and the Book of
Abraham,' Dialogue 28/1 (1995): 145-48. Gee's brief rebuttal (A Guide to the
Joseph Smith Papyri, pp. 40 and 67, n. 17) is unacceptable. Reference to a
costumed private individual in the Roman procession of Isis is not evidence
that the figure of Isis here (no. 2) is 'King Pharaoh, whose name is given in
the characters above his head,' as published by Joseph Smith.

Smith misunderstood 'Pharaoh' as a personal name (cf. Abraham 1:25), and the
name above fig. 2 is unquestionably that of the female Isis. Osiris (fig. 1)
is certainly not 'Abraham,' nor is it possible that the altar of Osiris (fig.3) 'signifies Abraham.' Maat (fig. 4) is not a male 'prince,' Hor (fig. 5) is
not a 'waiter,' nor is Anubis (fig. 6) a 'slave' (because of his dark skin).
Such interpretations are uninspired fantasies and are defended only with the
forfeiture of scholarly judgement and credibility."

I can't believe how supposedly intelligent human beings, such as Sam Dodini, a character on "Challenging Anti-Mormon Apologetics" who supposedly has a PhD nearly completed, can believe the Book of Abraham is really what it claims to be. After the evidence against the BOA has been examined and re-examined and determined as valid, there are people like Dodini who blindly assert that the BOA was written by Abraham 5,000 B.C.E. I would think that these people would be more concerned about establishing a relationship with the real Jesus Christ of the Holy Bible than a relationship with a fraudulent Mormon Jesus. You see, by refuting the BOA, the entire Mormon temple rite is refuted, as is the theology of Mormon polytheism. I guess it is much like true-blue Mormons believing and spouting their Book of Mormon fantasy that horses were in abundance in Mesoamerica from 600 B.C to 425 A.D, but writing on an ancient American history exam at Cornell University that horses became extinct on the American continent around 10,000 B.C. and were brought to the New world by the Europeans after 1492.

Mormons must have bifurcated brains, one side fantasy and the other side fact.

I spoke to Dr. Klaus Baer at the Oriental Institute shortly before he died about his translation of the JSP and about Hugh Nibley. That was after I had called Nibley on a Monday in 1979 and interrupted his home teachers. Nibley had told me things, lies, about Dr. Baer's translation of the JSP that Dr. Baer told me were false. When I had told him what Nibley had said, Dr. Baer chuckled and said that "I remember Hugh having a vivid imagination." I recall how Dr. Baer was very certain that the JSP he translated were the fragments used by Smith to create the BOA, and that the facsimiles and other illustrations in the BOA were those on the JSP fragments. Baer spoke of the gobbly-gook of the alphabet and grammar that Smith had concocted, and said that it was meaningless. Dr. Baer had also said that "blind faith in something as false as the Book of Abraham might provide support for a person's belief for a while, but it, over time, will ultimately fail."

It is a shame that the average Mormon who attends his ward actively has no idea about the real facts about the BOA. The true facts are not allowed to be taught in Mormon ward and stake meetings, in CES Institute classes, and in Mormon seminary.

Yah, the By His Own Hand book was the book that nailed the coffin for me too; I cried when I read the Kolob picture translation and shuddered to think all of my family were subject to this false cult...

I had always questioned Mormonism but believed Joseph Smith was inspired but corrupted. That book just made me realize it was all crap, and I think I blanked out after that because on 2nd reading I didn't remember all the other stuff after that but it honestly was like tossing the coffin into the ocean because it just became more clear.

I will have to read The Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri because I want a non-Mormon scholarly look at it. Thanks for the post!

Wow. Satan is working overtime. We can never know for sure what is actually ancient Chaldean or that the name Potiphar did not exist, or even the exact process by which the Prophet Joseph Smith translated these sacred texts, but we can know, through faith and prayerful study, the Truth of the Restored Gospel.


There, that wraps it up with a nice little bow, dontcha think?

In 1973, the missionaries and the seminary teacher taught me things that the the church leadership already knew were not true. I was mislead way back then.