My brother says the documents were lost in a fire..True not true???

Apologists claim (or use to) that the actual parts of the papyrus used in the translation were lost in the great Chicago fire, citing evidence such as Joe Smith's mother describing a long scroll that would roll out across the floor into another room, and no such scroll was found in the 1960's. However, the facsimiles are the same, and they don't match the "translation" at all. Anyway, check out the video.

You brother is WAY behind on the times (as was I most of my life - I too thought they were lost in the fire).

The original papyri came forth in 1966, and investigation has shown that they are in fact the original papyri. We know this because of the facsimiles, descriptions of other figures, and pages of characters that have been shown to be bound to the pages of facsimiles. It's all in the book "By His Own Hand Upon Papyrus."

And of course the writings are Egyptian funeral text dated at least a thousand years after Abraham.

The only real recourse that mopologists have is the idea that either Joseph Smith translated the Book of Abraham from another source (not likely considering all the evidence that Joseph in fact used these papyri) or that the entire thing was translated by revelation, similar to how Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon by sticking his head in a hat, usually when the golden plates weren't even in the room.

The Book of Abraham is one of the strongest evidences that Joseph Smith was a total fraud, and the church has been working hard to de-emphasize it in the past few decades.

So anyway, the answer to your question is:

FALSE



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/22/2011 10:59AM by kimball.

+1

...the church went on and on about how they had the actual scrolls again.

I used to have the old Improvement Era's what showed the scrolls when they were obtained from the museum in NY in the 60's. Oh how proud and pleased the church was that they had this incredible find in their possession! They were all puffed up about how Hugh Nibley was going to re-translate them blah blah blah. According to his daughter, Martha, the pressure of that assignment literally drove Hugh Nibley to madness.

The whole BOA fiasco was the nail in the coffin for me. As soon as I realized that JS had lied about that, I knew he had lied about all of it.

What we have printed in every single copy of the BOA is enough to discredit the whole thing.

Believers believe because they want to believe not because there is any evidence to support their belief.

Stunted

You guys are great. My RM brothewr is excommunicated and still believes the church is a cult, but JS was a profit and the BOM is true. He challenged me on my past knowlegde of the BOA. I thought I was right but needed you to give the references. I sent them to the Phillipines where he lives. Squatters also need to know the truth. ha Thanks, I love this board. Trying to get him to read it but too much fear programed into him NOT to read Anti mormon stuff.....If one does not seek both sides of an issue how could one every discover the truth??????????

If your RM brother is excommunicated, thinks the church is a cult but still believes that JS really was a prophet and the BoM is a true account of peoples who lived in the western hemisphere I think he is pretty much a hopeless case.

Glad I wasn't the only one that thought this. He's so close to the truth, yet so far.

Sounds like maybe a fundamentalist?

The family has agreed with your opinon for years.....

The Book of Abraham facsimiles were thought lost in the Great Chicago Fire, but were found in 1966 at the MoMA. It was translated in 1968 by noted Egyptologist Klaus Baer, who determined that the person who "translated" the BoA had no knowledge of the Egyptian language, adding later that there wasn't even a single lucky guess. Joseph Smith attempted to redraw the portions of the papyri that crumbled away, but his doodles were entirely inaccurate.

I've studied Egyptian history and mythology since I was a young boy. It had always bothered me that the facsimiles bore so much resemblance to typical Egyptian funerary documents and yet had such a starkly different translation. When I finally allowed myself to question the church's assertions, the BoA's obvious fraud became the primary piece of evidence against Smith and Mormonism.

Incidentally, apologists love to argue that Joseph didn't actually translate the papyri, but rather used it as inspiration in his rock-in-the hat translation of the REAL, lost papyri of Abraham. I love this explanation, because it makes NO SENSE. That would be like me "translating" the lost Mayan codices by reading Twilight while vigorously rubbing my dowsing rod.

homo sapiens maximus Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Incidentally, apologists love to argue that Joseph
> didn't actually translate the papyri, but rather
> used it as inspiration in his rock-in-the hat
> translation of the REAL, lost papyri of Abraham. I
> love this explanation, because it makes NO SENSE.
> That would be like me "translating" the lost Mayan
> codices by reading Twilight while vigorously
> rubbing my dowsing rod.

No kidding. As soon as I read Nibley's 'Abraham in Egypt', I knew that my testimony would never be the same. When I heard the whole line you've described, I realized that it had to be bunk. Who could believe this shit? It's caaaraaazy.

MoMA is the Museum of Modern Art

MMA is the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

but otherwise,

carry on.

Damnit. Meant to fix that, but got distracted. Good catch.

I called them today and they confirmed over the phone to my brother in the PHillipines that they did have the documents in 1966, and they were given back to the mormon church.....after they had been translated by non mormon scholars who confirmed that JS had no clue to the correct translation..JS was a fraud.

I've told this before-

When my son, (an avid reader of all things Egyptian) was 11 years old we were sitting in church and he was looking at the facsimiles and kept pointing out that the bald priest was supposed to be Anubis, and the canopic jars were not gods. He pointed to the female Isis and said it could not possibly be the Pharoah standing behind Abraham. He also correctly pointed out that it was a scene where the dead is brought to be judged before Maat.

His words were "Dad, I think the Caldeans got it wrong".

This was happening while we were sitting in Sacrament meeting and a young woman was giving a talk about honesty, and she was quoting some GA and the Gospel Principles manual about how even allowing someone to believe a falsehood is the same as lying. At this point we had already begun visiting other churches...

When we got home I showed him this website to let him know he was correct:
http://www.bookofabraham.com/boamathie/BOA_TOC.html

Later when he was asked how he felt in sacrament meeting that day he said it was like "a ghost had walked right through me".

Sadly, this event ruined his enthusiasm for egyptian studies.

were recovered, and coincidentally, that small fraction has nothing meaningful on it.

It's like the 'limited geography theory' of the BoM. Things just get smaller and smaller when you look for them and then they disappear. That's either from Alice in Wonderland or from JS's treasure hunting days.

There is no evidence that there is significantly more to the scrolls than found, just their everlasting hope.

Or its sort of like quantum mechanics, the harder you look for something, the more you search, the more elusive it becomes. Yeah, yeah, that's the ticket. In fact, it could be two places at the same time, neither of which is where you are. Hey, it requires faith to understand the complexities of Mormon apologetics.

The scrolls were rediscovered in the 60ies, and authenticated by the church itself who naively handed them over to professionals thinking BoA would be vindicated. It turned out, big surprise, that the mormons were wrong and suddenly mopologist claimed that "the real scrolls" were still destroyed after all.

Your brother must be a time traveler from the 60's.

Ana

It corresponds directly to the facsimiles. On the left was the character and on the right was JS's translation - some with whole paragraphs for just one symbol. The actual translation shows that JS didn't know a thing about translating egyptian.

...why did they take them to BYU and not to the profit, seer, and revelator?

That has always bothered me. If the top 15 in the church are indeed prophets, seers, and revelators, why wouldn't they look at the characters and get the inspiration necessary to authenticate the documents.

And it begs the question what have the church members received in the past decades as far as revelation goes? Not much.

I can just see "ole Joe" when he altered the characters on the papyri. He was taking his ink pen and had his tongue hanging out the side of his mouth because he was so focused on re-drawing some of the characters and "viola" we gots da Book of Abraham.

This thread was really funny. The BofA always gets me. I love that they keep it in there. My time at BYU-I it was rarely touched upon and pretty much just ignored. There are some stark revelations that old Joe Smith received in the Pearl of Great Price. That name makes me chuckle now too.

Homo Sapiens Maximums---very funny "That would be like me "translating" the lost Mayan codices by reading Twilight while vigorously rubbing my dowsing rod."

And all these people..my ancestors took the bait. I would love to meet JS just to see how fake he could be. He would probably lie to my face, over and over again. What a manipulative brainwashing expert. BOO! I would compare him to Hitler on a sliding scale.

His eyes have been opened by your excellent information.....thanks for all your help. I think he may even visit the board....let us see.

Some were probably destroyed in Woods Museum in Chicago in 1871 along with the two mummies they had (Joseph Smith had four originally). But I find it strange that you all buy the stories from so called "anti" sources without confirming it. It is certain that not all the papyri that Joseph had are extant today. The fragments that the church found out was in New York are probably a major portion but they are not all. The apologists just like to make out they are insignificant because of the fact that some portions are missing.

I live in the UK but would have loved to have carried out my research in Chicago and Canada but the 1871 fire was not the end of Woods Museum. I'm not certain if parts of it survived or were brought from other J.H.Wood museums but part of a collection was sold after a further fire at a new premises in 1877 and ended up in Canada. As far as I am aware - I do not think any of the two mummies of papyri survived the 1871/1877 fires. The fragments that survive clearly come from what was claimed to be the Book of Abraham and untranslated Book of Joseph (according to the records we have and Oliver Cowderey's discription).

Not true ....I spoke personally with the director today of the museum director and she confirmed they had the documents and they were given back to the morg, after they had been translated and scientist found JS was a fraud and his translations were lies.....I check this out today and spoke to them. I researched the subject...I do not give my opinons, I like facts.....