I know that this topic has been beaten to death, but this weekend I had time to reflect on this, and I wanted to rant a little bit.

I am pushing 30, and when I was a TBM the Book of Abraham was my FAVORITE book from "scripture." I hated most of the bible (God is such an asshole), the book of Mormon was BOOOOOOORRRRIIINGGG and so was the D&C, but the BOA was awesome.

The BOA layed out all of the doctrines that I actually liked about Mormonism. We were spirit children who helped with the creation and shaping of the world. God was a caring attentive father who shared his knowledge and power with his children, and wanted each of us to learn and grow and develop. Plus, it actually made more sense to me at the time about the earth being billions of years old, multiple mass extinctions, evolution, and a "god created" humanity that didn't show up until much later.

Not only that, but it layed out part of the foundation as to what the whole point of life was. To learn and grow as much as possible so that if we wanted to, we could go back and do the exact same thing as we had been practicing with the earth after we died.

LOVED IT! BUT!!!!

Not once in seminary were we taught at all that Joseph Smith made claims that he had recovered this book written by Abraham himself. Instead it became a very well layed out chronology that Joseph Smith finished the BOM, moved on to the Bible, got the book of Moses spiritually from genesis, THEN when he recovered this parchment, he was given revelation to write the book of abraham from part of the parchment. As far as seminary goes, never did Joseph Smith fail on any claims. He just did what he always did. Jesus gave him revelation, and we have "deeper" scripture than what Genesis had said, and what Moses had said too. It was a "line upon line" dealy.

WHAT A CROCK OF SHIT!!!

Later, by reading the goddamn apologists I find out that not only did Joseph claim all this bull from the parchment, but that the BOA discrediting happened a long time ago (never heard that growing up), and then they claim that the BOA isn't "very important to the Saints."

Well, fuck you apologists! It was the only thing keeping me in the church a long time after I started reviling the church for other stuff. I kept thinking "endure to the end, and I'll get what I want." But not knowing that all of the doctrines I actually liked came from a book that WAS EVEN EASIER TO DISCREDIT THAN THE BOOK OF MORMON!!

Goddamnit.

I figure he felt completely safe in making up all the stuff he did. Even though Champollion had begun his deciferment of Ancient Egyptian writing in 1822, it was a long time before it became actual well-known information. By then the BofA parchments were 'lost'.

There were a lot of things that he would have expected no one would ever be able to disprove.

My brother loved the Book of Abraham the most too......it would've been swell if such a thing really existed.

I had perma grin on my face!

I had the exact same experience (at age 30 no less).

Congratulations!

You used to love the BoA. I love it now because it was what made me go "I'm done here".

I have a story on topic.

10 years ago when I first found out about the issues with TSCC, I went to my closest friend for answers. I thought that all the members knew about these issues, and I was odd-man out. I asked him about BoM, about horses, about metal. I asked about polygamy. I asked about changes to the temple and undies. He had lame-wad answers for each, none of them were real answers.

Then I found out about the BoA issue. I was stunned. Just stunned. I went to him one last time. I remember it like it was yesterday. We were in the Barns & Noble parking lot, had just pulled up and I said "Mike, what is your take on this Book of Abraham thing?". Now, I am not making this up and you might call me a liar to my face, but swear to gawd, this was his verbatim answer:

"I believe it to be correct as far as it is translated correctly".

A-bwahahahaha! As a Grinch style of smile curled across my face I knew that the typical mormon has no idea of WHY they believe WHAT they believe. Just going along for the ride and parrot what they are told.

that the whole "curse of cain" and "less valiant" concepts came from the BofA... so it's not surprising when that portion of "The Pearl of Great Price" lost much of its value out in the open religious market.

But yeah, us old timers' perception of mormonism was based on the BofA - it's what made mormonism unique, warts and all.

Yup. Was there myself just this last Spring. This is one of my favorite videos covering this subject.

http://blog.mrm.org/2007/07/the-lost-book-of-abraham-now-available-online/

When I was talking to my TBM sister about the BofA and how it isn't a translation as the Church claims, my sister said, "Well, I believe it is 'revelation', maybe not translation." There is tons of proof that this was not revelation. Joseph Smith claimed that he was doing a direct translation from the papyrus in his journal and on other papers. He sure did botch up his "translation". lol

If you have time, watch the above video if you haven't seen it already. It is great.

that it was "The Book of Abraham, written by his own upon papyrus".

If he had not said that, I could have bought the "revelation vs translation" line.

I feel your pain. I cried for days over that one. The whole PoGP is what kept my mind engaged, kept hope in the doctrine alive. I even named my only son Enoch because of it.
That was one of the truly bitter disappointments in my exit. I was happy to give up the tithing b/s, the weekly snorefests, the busy work, the other sleep inducing texts,-but the BoA/PoGP- I can still feel that betrayal and it's been nearly 2 years since I discovered it was a fraud. (((HUGS)))

The apologist material on it just didn't cut it. They basically all but admitted that there wasn't a reasonable explanation for the BoA being false. From there, it all went to hell. I agreed with Hinckley; if one thing was false, the whole thing was.

After leaving, I realized what an arrogant claim the BoA is. It makes the Mormons truly look crazy.

Now that I think of it, I always used to go to the end of my quad and look at the pictures in there! That was the best :P

My never-mo SIL found me on the floor, hugging my quad and bawling. I'd just finished reading--studying!!--Charles M. Larson's illuminating book, *...by his own hand upon papyrus*, the Truth had struck hard and I couldn't deny the BoA was a fraud. JS was a fraud. The BoM was a fraud. I was devastated.

The BoA stuff was what drew me into TSCC in the first place. Without it, the Morg is at best just another Protestant church and at worst a big-time cult.

Ol' Joe never saw it coming, did he, the Rosetta Stone being translated, I mean.