032 The Abraham Facsimile Conundrum: Is it All or Nothing?

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Scott Woodward (00:00):
Hi, this is Scott from Church History Matters.
As we near the completion ofthis series, we want to hear your
questions about the Book of Abraham.
In two weeks we will be pleasedto have as our special guest Dr.
Kerry Muhlestein to help usrespond to your questions.
He is an Egyptologist and an authorand scholar on all things related
to the Book of Abraham, and Caseyand I have drawn heavily from Dr.

(00:21):
Muhlestein's excellent researchfor each of our Book of Abraham
episodes in this series.
So please submit your thoughtfulquestions anytime before October 18,
2023 to podcasts@scripturecentral.org.
Let us know your name, where you're from,and try to keep each question as concise
as possible when you email them in.
That helps out a lot.

(00:41):
Okay, now on to the episode.
In Joseph Smith's interpretationsof the facsimiles found in our Pearl
of Great Price, he ties all threeof them to Abraham, yet when some
modern Egyptologists look at thosesame facsimiles today, they say they
have nothing to do with Abraham.

(01:03):
One is simply an embalming scene, theysay, one a disc representing the eye
of Horus, and one a judgment scenefrom an Egyptian Book of the Dead.
So, is this an either-or,sudden-death scenario?
Must we, in the name of honestyand rationality, pick a side here?
Must we either throw out modernEgyptologists by choosing to stand with

(01:23):
the Prophet Joseph on the one hand, orthrow out Joseph by choosing to align
with modern Egyptologists on the other?
Or is there a reconciliatory thirdpath in which both interpretations
can be true at the same time?
In today's episode of Church HistoryMatters, we tackle this important question
by looking at some of the best scholarshipon this issue, and on our way, we'll

(01:46):
also briefly look at something called theKirtland Egyptian Papers and discuss a
minor controversy associated with those.
I'm Scott Woodward, and my co-host isCasey Griffiths, and today we dive into
our eighth episode in this series dealingwith Joseph Smith's non-Book-of-Mormon
translations and revelations.

(02:06):
Hello, Casey.

Casey Paul Griffiths (02:07):
Hello, Scott.
Welcome back.

Yeah.
Excited to dive back intosome Book of Abraham.
I think we left it on a prettymajor cliffhanger last time.

We did.
I hope nobody died of a heart attack.
This is so exciting.

So let's back up.
Do you mind just reviewingfor a second, Casey?
Like, how did we evenget the Book of Abraham?

Yeah.

What's up with the two scrolls, the four mummies,
the eleven fragments, and then thekind of translation options and
theories about how it was translated?

Yeah.

How fast can you do it?
This is the challenge.
Let's see.

I'm a college professor, so I don't
know if I can do anything quickly.
It all started 2,200 years ago.
No, I guess we started with Napoleon.

Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths: Napoleon invades Egypt. (02:47):
undefined

Okay.

Napoleon and his people plunder, rob, and steal all
these sacred antiquities from Egypt,and it creates an Egyptological craze
that we're still dealing with today.

Egyptomania.

Egyptomania.
I went to Egypt last year, and I get it.
Egypt is amazing.
And I was only there for three days,but the stuff I saw just blew my mind.
Just so cool.
And there's so much to see there, andit's such a fascinating culture, and to
add more, it's even linked to the Bible.
You go to the Egyptian museum, andthey have the earliest reference in

(03:21):
writing to the children of Israelin this big stela that's on display
in the Grand Egyptian Museum.

Wow.

So everybody in the 19th century is fascinated by
Egyptology and Egyptian antiquities.
And this guy named Antonio Lebolo,who is one of the more famous
archaeologists, grave robber,whatever you want to call the guy,
who secures this cache and collection.
Lebolo dies in 1830, his collectionmakes its way to the United States,
where a man named Michael Chandler—andwe don't know what Michael Chandler's

(03:49):
relationship was to Antonio Lebolo—startstraveling around displaying a set
of papyri, a collection of mummies.

Like, eleven mummies, right?

Yeah.

Eleven mummies and some papyrus scrolls, yeah.

Yeah.
And Michael Chandler really isn'tone of those “It belongs in a
museum” kind of dealers, becausehe's selling the stuff as he goes.
He's selling the mummies whenhe comes to Cleveland, Ohio.
Joseph Smith is nearby in Kirtland.
They meet together.
Joseph Smith examines some of the papyri,which contemporary people describe as
a large scroll, a small scroll, andother Egyptian materials, which we think

(04:24):
are these papyri fragments we've beentalking about, along with four mummies.
Joseph Smith identifies the papyrias containing the writings of Abraham
and Joseph in the court of Pharaoh.
Joseph and the AmazingTechnicolor Dreamcoat Joseph.

Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths: Church purchases them. (04:36):
undefined
Joseph Smith starts to translate them.
The translation isn't reallypublished until Nauvoo, but it forms
today what is the Book of Abraham.
And the translation published in Nauvooalso includes these three facsimiles
that are still, to this day, includedin every edition of the Pearl of
Great Price, Facsimile 1, 2, and 3,which is what our focus is on today.

(04:57):
After Joseph Smith's death, the Egyptianmaterials, including the mummies
and the papyri, go to his mother.
When she dies in 1856, Emma Smith andLewis Bidemon sell them to Abel Combs.
He sells part of thecollection to a museum in St.
Louis, then it's taken to Chicago, andin 1871 there's a big fire that destroys

(05:18):
at least two of the mummies, and wethink the scrolls associated with this.
However, in 1946 the New YorkMetropolitan Museum of Art acquires
several papyri fragments, one of whichappears to have Facsimile 1 on it.
They, in turn, contact a professorat the University of Utah.
He contacts the church.
The church obtains the papyri fragmentsand publishes them in the church

(05:39):
magazine and allows both Latter-daySaint and non-Latter-day Saint
Egyptologists to examine the papyri.

That's, like, 1967, right?

1967 is when this all happens.

Okay.

The papyri do not contain the writings of Abraham.
In fact, we would say they aren'teven linked to Abraham if it
wasn't for Facsimile 1 beingon one of the papyri fragments.

Is that a point of controversy at all, or...?

Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
A lot of people were like, this isproof Joseph Smith isn't a prophet.

Yeah.

But last time we presented three theories of translation.

Number 1 (06:09):
If you believe the fragments that we have are the
source of the Book of Abraham, thenyeah, Joseph Smith's not a prophet.
They're an Egyptian text, primarilyone called the Book of Breathings,
that was a funerary text.

Yeah.

However, theory number 2 is that we're missing
the source of the Book of Abraham.
And this lines up well with contemporarywitnesses who saw the Egyptian
materials, and what they described wasreally different from what we have.
Most of them described two rolls—wealready mentioned this, but—a long roll
and a smaller roll, then fragments.
It's pretty consistent from the witnessstatements that the fragments had been

(06:43):
glued to this piece of paper that theywere found on and put in a glass frame
by 1837 to try and preserve them.

That's early.

Yeah.
It seems like that's what we have.

Okay.

So theory number 2 is we just don't have
the source of the Book of Abraham.

Because those scrolls were destroyed in the Chicago Fire of 1871?

They were either destroyed, or they're lost.
Maybe somebody will find them in theirattic someday, but it seems like they
went to that museum that was eventuallyburned down, the Wood Museum in Chicago.

Okay.

Theory number 3 is the catalyst theory.
That is that none of the papyri werethe source of the Book of Abraham, that
the papyri were a catalyst that openedJoseph Smith to receiving revelations
that then constitute the Book of Abraham.
This is consistent with almost everyform of translation Joseph Smith
describes, and he's fairly transparentabout it, too, to just basically

(07:34):
say, I don't know Reformed Egyptian.
I don't know Hebrew.
I don't know Greek.
I don't know Egyptian.
I did this by the giftand inspiration of God.
And Latter-day Saints arevery comfortable with this.
That's the Book of Mormon.
That's the Joseph SmithTranslation of the Bible.

If he's a true prophet, he can do that kind of stuff.

Yeah.

Prophets can do stuff by revelation like that.

Yeah, he can do that kind of stuff.
So all those things seem to account forthe text of the Book of Abraham, but the
cliffhanger we left everybody on was thefacsimiles in the Book of Abraham, which a
lot of antagonists towards the church willsay, Joseph Smith just got them wrong.
He just got them wrong.

Yeah.

And so that's what we're going to focus on today.

Okay.

But before we do that, we want
to take a quick side tangent.
And I know everybody wants to talkabout the facsimiles, and we're
teasing here, but we need to at leastmention another little facet of the
Book of Abraham, and that is what arecalled the Kirtland Egyptian Papers.

Ooh.
Now, what are the KirtlandEgyptian Papers, Casey?

Okay.
So when we've been talking aboutthis, we've been talking about
the mummies and the papyri.
Those stay with Lucy Mack Smith,go to Emma Smith, and most of
them go to the museum, eventually.

For those eleven fragments that end up in the Met.

Those eleven fragments that end up in the Met.

Okay.

The Kirtland Egyptian papers don't go with them.
They come west with the church.
And they are papers that the churchhas always had in its collection.
They were published by theJoseph Smith Papers project.
In fact, I have here with mea lovely facsimile edition
that was published in 2018.
Full disclosure, most of thestuff that the Joseph Smith Papers

(09:04):
project publishes in print isavailable on their website for free.

Whoa, whoa, so I don't have to buy those super expensive books?

Yeah, yeah.
I'm looking at this book, andI used my research funds to
purchase it, and it's $90.
So if you have $90—

Yeah.

—by all means, go and drop that.

Go for it.

Yeah.
If you're a completist like me, andyou've got to have the whole Joseph
Smith Papers set in print, go for that.
But if you're a poor student, orjust more thrifty than I am, all
this stuff is typically available onthe Joseph Smith Papers site within
a year after it's been published.
So, I mean, you're two clicks away.
Just go and look at this right now.
The Kirtland Egyptian papers weretaken west when the church went west.

They consist primarily of two collections: number 1, what's known as the Abraham (09:42):
undefined
Manuscripts, which contain the extantEnglish text of the Book of Abraham.
These manuscripts date between mid-1835,when Joseph Smith starts translating—he
gets the Egyptian materials inthe summer of 1835—and early 1842.
That's the accounting for thesecond period of translation
takes place in Nauvoo.

And do we have all the Book of Abraham accounted
for in those manuscripts?

Yes.

Okay.

And we also can do a pretty good job identifying
the scribes that Joseph worked with.
So W.
W.
Phelps, who we've mentioned, wasone of the earliest people to see
the Egyptian materials, was reallyexcited about them, thought it would
help the case of the Book of Mormon.
Warren Parrish, who eventuallyapostatizes from the church, but
he's one of our main sources thathe says Joseph told him the Book of
Abraham came by direct inspiration.

(10:29):
We've got Frederick G.
Williams, who's a member of the FirstPresidency, who is excommunicated but
comes back and dies in the church,and Willard Richards, who—Willard
Richards is close secretary,close friend of Joseph Smith.
He's in Carthage Jailwhen Joseph is killed.

Yeah.

The second collection is called the Egyptian Language
Manuscripts, and these are kind of ahodgepodge of documents that transcribe
portions of the characters from theEgyptian papyri and appear to systematize
an understanding of the Egyptian language.
These are in the handwritings of W.
W.
Phelps, Joseph Smith, OliverCowdery, and Warren Parrish.
So the Egyptian language manuscriptsare, they took a character off the

(11:06):
papyri, and then they would sometimeswrite off to the side, oh, this is
what this means, and they're wrong.
There's no polite way to put it.
They're just wrong.

So they're trying to decipher the hieroglyph, one
hieroglyph at a time, and they createthis—they call it an alphabet, right?
The grammar and alphabetof the Egyptian language.

Yeah.

By the way, so they're trying to create this
alphabet about the same time thatsomething called the Rosetta Stone
is being worked on by experts, right?

Mm-hmm.

Can you line those timetables up at all for us?

Yeah, and maybe we need to—I thought I wouldn't have
to do this in my classes, but I needto, because I was talking about the
Book of Abraham and I actually said,“This was before the Rosetta Stone.”
And all my classes started giggling,and I was like, “Why are you laughing?”

Why is that funny?

And they go, “Well, you mean that Joseph Smith didn't
have a computer program that teacheshim different languages?” I was like,
“No—guys, there's an actual Rosetta Stonethat the program is named after.” But
basically, nobody can translate Egyptianuntil the Rosetta Stone is discovered.
The Rosetta Stone is a stela.
It's an inscription on rockthat's discovered in 1799 that

(12:14):
has inscriptions on it in Egyptianhieroglyphics, in Greek, and the
third language is Demotic, I think?

Demotic.
Yeah.

Demotic.
Okay.
And since Greek is a known language,now they're able to compare, because
all these inscriptions say the samething, and they're able to use it as a
key to start to break open the Egyptian.

The code of the hieroglyphics.

Yeah, this isn't like today, where findings
are published on the internetand everybody knows about them.
It takes decades for thescholarship to circulate.
And at this point the scholarshipreally hasn't made it to America.
So it seems like the KirtlandEgyptian papers are showing that
Joseph Smith and his contemporarieswere trying to find a secular means
of translating the Book of Abraham.

(12:57):
They're taking the characters out.
They're writing aninterpretation off to the side.
They're trying to figure out what it is.
And like I said, these are just there.
They're in the Joseph Smith papers.

And they're not getting it right at all, right?
Like—

They're not right.

—they're little hieroglyphs with
their description next to it.
Like, the description has nothingto do with what the hieroglyphs
actually mean as modern Egyptologistscurrently understand it, right?

Yeah.

Okay.

I mean, I think the main takeaway from the Kirtland Egyptian
papers is that Joseph Smith didn't knowEgyptian, though he doesn't claim to ever.

But he was so fascinated with it, right?
He wanted—he loved ancient languages,and he wanted to try to figure it out.

Yeah.

But Joseph as a scholar of Egyptology, not so hot.
As a revelator, fantastic.

Yeah.
So here's just four points aboutthe Kirtland Egyptian papers.
We took these from Pearlof Great Price Central.
Go and check out the article there.

Number 1 (13:47):
We have these papers, but the extent of Joseph Smith's involvement
in their creation is unknown.
There is some of his handwriting onone manuscript and his signature on
another, but there's not enough evidenceto clearly demonstrate that Joseph
Smith is the real driver behind this.
Most of the manuscripts are in W.
W.
Phelps's handwriting.
He's a close associate of JosephSmith, but we don't know to what

(14:09):
degree Joseph Smith is working on this.
Second, it's unclear when in 1835 JosephSmith began creating the Book of Abraham
manuscripts or what the relationshipis between the Egyptian language
manuscripts and the Book of Abraham.
So we know he starts on theBook of Abraham in 1835.
We don't really know what the timeline isand how these things fit into it, okay?

Okay.

Third, while considerable overlap of themes
exists between the Book of Abrahamand the Egyptian language documents,
most of the Book of Abraham is nottextually dependent on any of the
extant Egyptian language documents.
The inverse is also true.
Most of the content of theEgyptian language documents is
independent of the Book of Abraham.
So the themes overlap a little bit,but what they're writing in the
Egyptian language documents and whatis in the Book of Abraham don't have

(14:53):
a strong connection to each other.
Okay?

Okay.

And finally, the Egyptian language documents were never
presented as an authoritative revelationby Joseph Smith or any other person.
This is from the introduction to the JSPvolume on the Kirtland Egyptian Papers.

Okay.

What emerges most clearly from a closer look at the Kirtland
Egyptian Papers is the fact that thereis nothing official or final about them.
They are fluid, exploratory, confidential,and hence free of any possibility
of intention of fraud or deception.
So when you look at these papers, itseems like they're messing around with
Egyptian and they're trying to figureit out, but they don't publish them.

(15:30):
They don't put them out there, theydon't say that they're the real deal.
They're just exploring the charactersthat are in some of the papyri and trying
to figure out on their own what it is.

So it's kind of them just kind of noodling
around with the hieroglyphicsand trying to figure stuff out.

Yeah.

As a pet side project, but not anything official
or claiming to be revelation.

Yeah.
One of the mistakes we sometimesmake is Joseph Smith said that
his translation projects cameby the gift and power of God.
And sometimes in doing that,we tend to belittle the value
of academic scholarship.
Joseph Smith did not do that.
Joseph Smith felt that academicscholarship was really valid.
He tried to learn Hebrew.
He's learning Greek and German.

Yeah.

When Martin Harris asks if he can take some of
the characters from the Book of Mormonplates to a scholar and have them look
at them, Joseph Smith is all for it.
He copies the charactersonto a piece of paper.
Martin Harris goes to atleast three different people.

Yeah.

The most famous one is Charles Anthon.
Allows secular scholars to look at this.
Like, I think if there was a wayto translate the Book of Mormon or
these papyri through secular means,they would have been all for it.
They're open to that avenue.

Yeah.

But ultimately in these situations, there isn't.
I mean, Charles Anthon says thathe thought the characters Martin
Harris showed him were authentic,but nobody knows Egyptian at that
time, including Charles Anthon.

Right.

And so he wouldn't have been able to translate
them if they had brought them to him.

Yeah.
Joseph Smith is not averse to scholarship.
He's not averse to scholars.
He didn't see scholars as theenemy to revealed religion.
He felt like study and faithwent together in perfect harmony.

Yeah.

I think that's consistent in all of his projects,
in the School of the Prophets.
. . In fact, my theory is that it was becauseof the Book of Mormon translation that he
got so interested in ancient languages.
Like, his original experience as atranslator, a 23-year-old young man,
I think that had a major lastingimprint on him, and so he wanted to

(17:30):
learn ancient languages, actually.

Yeah.

I think that plays out the rest of his life.

Yeah, I think that's a fair assessment.
So these Kirtland Egyptian papers, we justwanted to acknowledge that they're there,
but it's kind of like the theory numberone: Everybody says these are wrong.
They're wrong.
The main thing that they prove is thatJoseph Smith didn't know Egyptian.

Yeah.

And that's okay.
Joseph Smith didn't claimthat he knew Egyptian.

Yeah.

But they also show that they're putting in some
“by study and also by faith.” They'retrying to figure this out on their own.
But they're not the source of the Book ofAbraham, and they don't demonstrate that
Joseph Smith knew how to do an academictranslation of Egyptian, which is okay.
That's never what he or thechurch or anybody has claimed
about the Book of Abraham.

Gotcha.
Okay, so the major controversysurrounding the Kirtland Egyptian
papers is that the conclusions theycame to in terms of the meaning of
the hieroglyphs are just flat wrong.
And so that's it.
Now, whatever assumptions you wantto bring to that, that's where things
can get complicated, but the facts ofthe matter are that they got it wrong.

(18:31):
Their efforts to translatehieroglyphics in an academic
way proved erroneous, basically.

Yeah, if that's what this is.
I mean, we're makingsome assumptions here.

Right.
So, yeah, so the assumptions you bring tothat are where that can get complicated,
and that can get weighty, right?
If you think that this is their attemptto translate and that then they go on
to claim that they got it right andthat that was the source material for
the Book of Abraham itself that wegot in our scriptures, that's how it
gets all convoluted and loaded, right?
And so—

Yep.

—none of those assumptions are actually baked in, right?
You have to bring those assumptions to it.
So that's the Kirtland Egyptian papercontroversy in a nutshell, right?

Yep.
That is a controversy.
Admittedly, it's a smaller,more minor controversy for the
Book of Abraham, but it's there.
We wanted you to know.

Yeah.

Now let's get to the main course, which is the
facsimiles from the Book of Abraham.

Okay.

Scott, bring us up to date on the facsimiles
and where we're at and what we'regoing to be dealing with today.

Okay, yeah.
So there are major controversiesin the Book of Abraham
regarding these facsimiles.
There's three.
We've all known them since childhood.
If you grew up as a child in theLatter-day Saint movement, you know that
in the back of your scriptures, there'sthese three pictures, and they're called
Facsimile 1, Facsimile 2, Facsimile 3.

(20:00):
We've already introduced inour last episode some of the
controversies regarding these.
The first one was that nothing in theexisting papyri that is right next to,
for instance, Facsimile 1, correspondsto anything in Joseph's Book of Abraham

translation (20:14):
that there's nothing about Abraham in the hieroglyphs that are
right next to Facsimile 1, if you golook that up on Joseph Smith Papers.
And we've dealt with that.
That's not a problem.
That's not an issue.
Joseph Smith never claimed tobe translating, and none of
the eyewitnesses say he wastranslating, from Facsimile 1, right?

Yeah.

But Facsimile 1 does end up in our scriptures without the
hieroglyphs next to it on the righthand side, and so it has something
to do with Abraham, doesn't it?
In fact, the little descriptionsunderneath say that it's about Abraham,
that it's Abraham on an altar, right?
And then the story is told inAbraham chapter 1 about how his
father attempted to sacrificehim through one of the priests of

(20:54):
Elkenah, I believe he said it was.

Yeah.

But with Facsimile 1, when you look at it a little more carefully,
what we find is that the head of thepriest that's trying to sacrifice the
guy on the altar is missing, and partof the torso of the guy is missing, and
modern Egyptologists look at that and say,Oh, the priest, that's obvious who that
priest guy is that's standing by the bed.
That's a typical Egyptian embalming scene.

(21:19):
These are all over Egypt.
If you go to Egypttoday, you can see these.
This has nothing to do with Abraham orhuman sacrifice: That's the God Anubis.
He's just embalming somebody.
There's little jars underneath thebed where they would take out the
organs and place them in there.
And Anubis is, like, a—he's actually ajackal-headed god, and you can see in
Egypt these types of facsimiles, andthey always with the person lying on the

(21:43):
couch, have Anubis, the jackal-headedgod, standing above them, embalming them.

Yeah.

This is an embalming scene.
This is not Abraham being sacrificed,according to modern Egyptologists.

Mm-hmm.

So that's a problem with Facsimile 1.
Facsimile 2 is the circle, little disc.
It's called a hypocephalus.
Hypo just means under, andcephalus means the head.
This is a little disc, usually madeout of papyrus or stuccoed linen
or bronze or gold or wood or clay,which Egyptians would carve these

(22:16):
hieroglyphs in, and then they'd placeit under the head of their dead.
And they believed what was carved onthat disc would magically cause the head
and body to be enveloped in flames orradiance, making them divine, and the
hypocephalus itself symbolized the Eye ofRa, or Horus, which is the sun god, right?

Mm-hmm.

And the scenes that are portrayed on the disc then relate to
the Egyptian concept of resurrection andlife after death, that kind of thing.
Sometimes it was thought thatthe disc would be like a guide
into the afterworld, right?

Like a map of the afterlife or something like that.

Yeah, a map of the afterlife, that's right.
But I think the key idea is thatthe disc itself, like if you zoom
out, that's, like, the eye of Ra.
You zoom in, and it's got, like, thedetails of the map to the afterlife,
and the concept of resurrection, etc.
So that's the hypocephalus, andit has nothing to do with Abraham.
This is just a disc to guide thedead, placed under their head.

(23:16):
And then the third facsimile is adrawing of a judgment scene from the
125th chapter of the Book of the Dead.
And it has, again, nothing todo with Abraham, inherently.
This was not about Abraham.
This is a judgment scene.
You can see these people.
There's someone sitting on a throne,there's someone standing behind that
person, and there's three peoplein front of the judgment seat.

(23:37):
Two of them are holding hands,and one person behind is holding
on to the waist of the person.
I don't know if they'repushing them forward or what.
You can interpret how you will.
But Facsimile 3 is reallyfascinating because it has a lot
of hieroglyphics still on it.
Even in our scriptures, if yougo look there, you can see these
hieroglyphics, and then you see theselittle numbers, and those numbers then
correspond to English at the bottom.

(23:58):
We presume, there's another assumptionwe have to make, but we assume
that the interpretations of thosehieroglyphs are Joseph Smith's.
At least they have his approval, as theywere printed in the Times and Seasons.

Yeah.

Which, by the way, the Book of Abraham doesn't become scripture
canon for Latter-day Saints until 1880.
So long after Joseph Smith's dead, but heobviously endorsed the Book of Abraham.
He published it.
He thought it was super important.

Yeah.

And that's how far it went in his lifetime.
But later the significance of it isrecognized by church leaders to the
point of suggesting it for canonization,and it makes it into our canon.
So now we have canonized facsimiles,canonized Egyptian facsimiles,
which appear to have nothingto actually do with Abraham.

Yeah.

And especially that third facsimile with Joseph Smith,
ostensibly his interpretation ortranslation of the hieroglyphs,
that has nothing to do with Abraham.
He says it does, but when modernEgyptologists look at those hieroglyphs,
they say that Joseph got it wrong,that his translation is not accurate.
So to say it succinctly, the translationsof the facsimiles that we do have

(25:04):
in our scriptures right now, thatare canonized, are actually way off
according to modern Egyptologists.
And so that's the major controversywe want to talk about today,
because some people look atthat and say, that's checkmate.
That's game over for Joseph Smith.
We finally have a way to assess Joseph'sability to truly translate, because he
always claims to be able to, and nowwe can test him, and he fails the test.

(25:28):
And so, boom.
Game over.
So what do we do with that, right?

Yeah.

Today we want to talk about what faithful Egyptologists,
Latter-day Saints, have to say aboutthat in response to that criticism.
Like, Kerry Muhlestein, he's gota degree from UCLA, right Casey?

Yes.
He was named the graduate student ofthe year at UCLA in his PhD program.

Which is in Egyptology, correct?

Yes, that is correct, yeah.

And other scholars that are full-on believers that Joseph
Smith is a true prophet, who also notonly know about these controversies,
but actually can read the hieroglyphs,and they know a whole lot more.
This is an example of where a littlelearning is a dangerous thing.
Saying, “Ooh, Egyptologists,they say that Joseph Smith got

(26:18):
that wrong, therefore, boom.
Checkmate, Joseph Smith.” A littlebit of learning here is dangerous.

Yeah.

What we need to do is drink deeper.
We need to go deeper, drink deeper,get into the Egyptologist mindset.

Mm-hmm.

In fact, today we're going to let Kerry Muhlestein be our guide.
I called him once about thisparticular issue, and I said,
“Kerry, you've studied this.
You're aware of the controversy, andyet you're still a believer that Joseph
Smith is a true prophet and that theBook of Abraham is true scripture.
How do you reconcile all that?
Like, what do you do?
Walk me through the mental moves,” right?

(26:51):
And, “What do you know thatsome people don't know?
That the ones who don't know itand are struggling with this and
say that this is, like, one of thelinchpins that broke their testimony?
Like, what do you know that keeps youin, whereas others are more vulnerable
because they don't know what you know?
Like, tell me what you know,Kerry.” And he's very gracious.
He's a super kind, gentle man.

(27:12):
He said, “I can give you a short version,but Scott, I've published about this.
Haven't you read my stuff?” Like,“Ah, crud.” and he actually sent
me a link to one of his articlesthat he's written about this in the
Meridian Magazine in September 2014.
It's called, “Interpreting theAbraham Facsimiles.” Super helpful.
And so let me just walkthrough what Kerry says.
I'll quote from his article, and wecan discuss as we go through this.

(27:35):
So this is in direct response, then,to that controversy about, did Joseph
Smith actually get the translation wrong?
And do these facsimiles even belongin our scriptures if they weren't
originally even about Abraham, anddo they in any way cast a negative
light on Joseph Smith's prophethood?
So, anything you want to say,Casey, before I walk through?

No, fire away.
Just that I know all these guys,too, and I trust them, and their
scholarship in here is reallyinteresting, too, so let's dive in.

Okay.
Here we go.

So here's what Kerry says (28:03):
He says, “Even though it is obvious to
ask whether or not Joseph Smith'sexplanations of the facsimiles matches
with those of Egyptologists, it is notnecessarily the right question to ask.”
Ah, shoot, comes out swinging here.
“As we compare Facsimile 1,” he continues,“or any of the facsimiles, with similar

(28:24):
Egyptian vignettes, we may be barkingup the wrong tree.” He goes on, “What
if Abraham's descendants, the Jews, tookEgyptian elements of culture and applied
their own meanings to them?” Let's pauseand just soak that in for a second.
“What if Abraham's descendants, theJews, took Egyptian elements of culture
and applied their own meanings to them?”So a cultural appropriation of Egyptian

(28:48):
artifacts into Jewish ways of thinking.
This is interesting.
He goes on, “We actually know thishappened, so we shouldn't be looking
at what Egyptians thought facsimilesmeant at all, but rather at how ancient
Jews would have interpreted them.
The facsimiles were created in aday when the Egyptians were living

(29:08):
among a great number of Greeks andJews, and each of these cultures
borrowed from each other,” he says.

That's an interesting thing that he actually
starts his little book on the Bookof Abraham with, is that in Egypt,
where Hor, who's one of the figuresassociated with these papyri—there were
tons of Jewish people living there.

Yeah.

Kind of like a little subculture, the way you
might have, like, a, you know, alittle Guatemala, you know, or a
little Cuba or anything like that.
Like, the way he's describing Alexandriareminded me a lot of when I was a
missionary in Miami when there was,like, a little Nicaragua and a little
Cuba and a little Trinidad over hereand a little Jamaica and all these
subcultures mingling together becauseit's a commercial and intellectual center.

(29:50):
In fact, Alexandria is the,you know, intellectual center
of the early ancient world.

Yeah.

And that's where a lot of these manuscripts come from.
So it does fit that whoever the owner ofthese papyri were, which we think is Hor,
that Egyptian priests would be interactingwith all these different cultures.
That's something that works.

Yeah.
In fact, one of the articles at Pearlof Great Price Central says this: that
“the city of Alexandria was home toa sizable Jewish community.” We're
talking from about 300 BC to 400 AD.
“And evidence from surviving textualsources confirms that Jewish names,
including names like Solomon, Aaron,Abraham, and Samuel proliferated

(30:30):
throughout Egypt.” So obviouslythe Jewish culture is influencing
Egypt, and the Jews are beinginfluenced by Egypt during this time.

Yeah.

“There is also clear evidence,” I'm continuing to quote from
that Pearl of Great Price Central article.
“There is also clear evidence thatthese Egyptian Jews copied their
sacred texts and composed newtexts while they lived in Egypt.
The Old Testament was translated intoGreek in Alexandria during this time.
And,” key point, “stories about Abrahamand other Biblical figures circulated

(31:00):
amongst Jews living both inside andoutside of Egypt.” And the Jews actually
established a thriving community onthe island of Elephantine, and they
actually build a temple to Yahwehthere, to Jehovah, the God of Israel.
And they made copies of biblical textsthat have survived today, again, attesting
to the existence of a thriving literaryand religious culture in their community.

(31:24):
So, yeah, this is not a small point.
This is a big point.
This is where context is going to playa huge role in helping to mitigate
the potency of that attack againstJoseph Smith and the Book of Abraham.

Yeah.

So Kerry Muhlestein continues.
He says, “The Greeks were heavilyinfluenced by the Egyptians, and the
Egyptians borrowed from both the Jewsand the Greeks in their religious and
cultic practices and representations.
And many Jews were similarly influencedby the Greeks and Egyptians.” This is
cultural sharing and borrowing fromeach other and influencing one another.

(31:58):
And so he says, “The Jews in Egypt wereusing representations from the cultures
around them, but using and understandingthem in their own unique way.
Isn't it possible that this wasalso done with all three facsimiles?
Couldn't these all represent a Jewishway of understanding Egyptian style
drawings?” And then he says, “On the otherhand, we also know that at least some

(32:21):
Egyptians were using Jewish stories andideas in their religious practices and

writings.” And so here's his conclusion: “Given this cross-cultural sharing and (32:27):
undefined
using each other's depictions and namesand stories, how can someone forcibly
argue that something like Facsimile 1cannot represent something other than the
traditional Egyptological interpretation?
Such a supposition is untenableand would never be made unless

(32:50):
an agenda was driving it.
This is especially so when we examineall the unique elements behind
Facsimile 1.” So, ooh, that's a lot.
That's an important nuggetthat he's giving us here.
This idea of cross-culturalsharing and using one another's
art and stories is huge.

Yeah.

So let's think about this slowly, here.
Let's think through some of the options ofwhat that kind of opens up for us in terms
of ways of thinking about the facsimiles.

Okay.

So at level one you have what the original Egyptian
author or artist was trying todepict in the facsimile, right?
But then you've got layer number two,or level number two, is what Jews
who are living in Egypt thought thosepictures meant or adapted those Egyptian
depictions to say, what stories theywanted those depictions to tell that

(33:39):
diverged significantly from the originalmeaning of the original artist, right?

Mm-hmm.

And then you've got level three, which is you've got
Egyptian priests—specifically in Thebes,by the way, in the very area where
these mummies and papyri scrolls werediscovered that end up being, at least
one of them, part of the Book of Abraham.
It's from that same area.
We've got Egyptian priests in Thebes whoare incorporating Jewish stories about
Abraham into their Egyptian worship.

(34:07):
So we know this is actually happeningin the right place and at the right
time where those same scrolls werediscovered that are the source
material for Facsimiles 1, 2, and 3that we have in our scriptures now.
So let's just take a breath for asecond and think about what that means
and the possibilities that opens up.
Anything you want to sayabout this so far, Casey?

Just that, like I said, the situation, inevitably, is
more complex than just, hey, JosephSmith got this Egyptian symbol wrong.
Symbols are really complicated.
Like you said, sometimes in the culturalcontext—like, if you see the St.
Louis Temple, it's got a big Star of Davidin the big, blue window that's there.
We always associate that symbol withJudaism, but Latter-day Saints can

(34:50):
take that symbol, too—I mean, it'sreally just an upward triangle and a
downward triangle superimposed overeach other—and give a different meaning.
And so in a situation where we'redealing with symbols, there's
a lot of ways to interpret it.
And actually, like Kerry's saying,it seems like in antiquity, this was
something that happened quite a bit.

Yeah.

Symbols being repurposed to tell different stories.

Cultural appropriation is sometimes what it's called today.
Take one thing from one culture, bringit into your culture, and you can give
it a twist and a different meaning thanit originally meant in its original
culture, and that's just what humans do.

Yeah.
And cultural appropriation isgenerally seen as negative today.

Right.

In the ancient world, not really.
I mean—

Right.

It happened all the time, and it was not
seen as stealing anything.

Right, exactly.
And being aware of thattotally opens this up for us.
So that's the intellectual groundworkthat needs to be laid, and you
need to have that mindset so thatyou can appreciate what we now

(35:58):
find in the actual archaeologicalrecord from Thebes at this time.
Check this out.
So two papyri have been discoveredin Thebes, that same part of Egypt as
Joseph's papyri, in the early 1800s thatdate to around the 3rd century AD, roughly
the same age as Joseph Smith's papyri,and they are talking about, guess who?

(36:21):
Abraham.

Yeah.

In fact, there's a lion couch scene, actually, very similar to
Facsimile 1, a lion couch scene that wasdiscovered in Thebes from the same time
period, late 200 AD-ish, that appearsin, it's called the Leiden Papyrus.
And so you've got the lion couch, you'vegot someone laying on it, and then
above them is Anubis, the jackal-headedgod, and there's little writing

(36:45):
underneath it, in Greek, by the way.
In Greek is written Abraham's name.
It says something like, “Abraham, whoupon,” and then the papyrus cuts off
right there, so we're not sure whatit said, probably something like,
“who upon the couch.” It's one ofour best evidences that what Kerry is
telling us here is actually happening.
We've got lion couch.

(37:05):
It's Egyptian.
It's in Thebes, but we'vegot Greek writing underneath
it, and it's associating itdirectly with Abraham, right?
I don't know if you can get moreof a bullseye than that, actually.

Yeah.

That's super helpful.
Did the original artistthink that was about Abraham?
Who knows?
But what matters is that by 200AD, there is someone who speaks
Greek who is associating thislion couch scene with Abraham.
That's what matters.

Yeah.

Now let's talk about the hypocephalus, Facsimile number 2.
So we talked about how that representsthe Eye of Ra or the Eye of Horus, right?
The Sun God.
Sometimes they call it the Wedjat Eye.
This is the Wedjat Eye.
Maybe you've seen, there's that kindof classic Egyptian eye painting.
It's like an eye, and it has, like,a nice eyebrow above it, and there's,
like, this little swirly thing thatcomes down from the bottom of the eye.

(37:54):
You know what I'm talking about?

Yeah, these are all over Egypt.

Yeah, these are called the Wedjat Eye.

Yeah.

Yeah.
And the pupil of the eye isrepresentation here of, this
is Horus, this is Horus’s eye.
Now why that matters is because therewas discovered, again, about late 200
AD-ish, from the Thebes area, on asecond papyri, the phrase, “Abraham, the
pupil of the eye of the Wedjat.” Woo!

(38:21):
“Abraham, the pupil of the eyeof the Wedjat.” And what does
the hypocephalus represent?
It represents the pupil of the eyeof Horus, which is the Wedjat Eye.

Yeah.

So, boom, there we go.
So now we've got two ancient Egyptianpapyri that Joseph Smith could
not possibly have known about thatassociate Abraham not only with a
lion couch scene, but now also withthe Wedjat Eye of Horus, which the
hypocephalus is supposed to represent.
So far, that's two for two, Casey.
That's two for two.
The right time, the right location, andsuperimposing Abraham onto these more

(38:56):
ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, right?
Associating Abraham withthe meaning of these.

Yeah.

Again, whether that was the original intention
of the original artist or notdoesn't matter at all, right?
What matters is that we've now got solidevidence that people at this time and in
this place were using Egyptian facsimilesto tell stories about Abraham, which is
no more or less than what Joseph Smithis claiming with the three facsimiles
in the Book of Abraham, correct?

Yeah.

So what about Facsimile number 3?
That judgment scene from the 125thchapter of the Book of the Dead.
What about that one?

Yeah.

Well, there was something called the Testament of Abraham that was
discovered after Joseph Smith's time whereAbraham is shown a vision of the last
judgment scene that is unquestionablyrelated to the judgment scene pictured in
the 125th chapter of the Book of the Dead.
Thus clearly associating, again, Abrahamwith the Egyptian Book of the Dead.

(40:02):
That's three for three, Casey.

Mm-hmm.

That's three for three, where Facsimile 1, Facsimile 2, and
Facsimile 3 are all associated, inantiquity, in Egypt, with Abraham.
And at least two of thosethree are from the Thebes area.

Yeah.

Woo!
What do you want to say about that?

Just that all this is a great example of what
you've referenced several times,which is to think slowly about things.

Yeah.

A lot of times, when somebody says something like, “Hey,
Joseph Smith's interpretation doesn'tmatch what Egyptologists say,” somebody
just jumps off the boat, you know, anduses it as an excuse to disassemble their
whole belief system, and we all need toreevaluate our beliefs from time to time.
There's nothing wrong with that.

Sure.

But at the same time, too, when something new
and shiny comes along, it doesn'tmean you have to abandon everything
that you've already believed.

Yeah.

And let me give you another example,
and this is one that Kerry oftencites in regards to Facsimile 1.
Facsimile 1 is depicted as the priestattempting to sacrifice Abraham, and
a lot of Egyptologists really hadan issue with that because Egyptians
didn't practice human sacrifice.
So they felt like, you know, this isan obvious error or falsity because

(41:17):
Egyptians don't practice human sacrifice.

Yeah.

That was the prevailing thought of the day when
Kerry Muhlestein started doing hiswork, and it turns out that it's wrong.

Ooh.

There were situations where Egyptians
did practice human sacrifice.

Ah, shoot.

But here's the condition
typically happened for what iscalled a cultic offense, or an
offense against the Egyptian god.
So they did practice human sacrifice,but typically when it was carried
out was when somebody was, youknow, blaspheming against the gods.
So what does the scenario inthe Book of Abraham present?

(41:54):
That Abraham is doing exactly that.
Abraham is saying these godsare false and they're idolatrous
and we shouldn't worship them.
And so they attempt to takehis life because of it.

Yeah.

The other thing is is the Book of Abraham clearly presents
Ur, the place where Abraham grows up,as an Egyptian satellite community.
Did this sort of thing, thesecultic sacrifices, when someone's
blaspheming against the god, happenin these satellite communities?
Yeah.
So that's one case where theprevailing thought of the day was
Egyptians don't do human sacrifice.
Then, as more evidence, as more materialscame forward, it turns out, yeah, they do.

(42:28):
And they did precisely in thekinds of circumstances that
the Book of Abraham describes.
Now, if you had just taken that“Egyptians don't practice human
sacrifice” idea and run with it,you could have made a huge mistake.
On the other hand, if you lookat it and say, “All right.
It seems like that conflicts rightnow, but I'm not going to panic or
anything like that,” eventually theevidence came forward that not only

(42:50):
confirmed that the Book of Abraham andFacsimile 1 and the scene presented are
plausible, but that they actually fitthe newer facts that we know quite well.
And so you've done a great jobhere, Scott, illustrating the
practice we advise to people, whichis to think slowly about things.
You know, don't run off with asingle idea just because it seems

(43:11):
to conflict with what you believe.

Yeah.

Take time to think about it, and it's okay to
reevaluate from time to time, butalso don't throw the baby out with the
bathwater, where you completely abandoneverything because something appears
to conflict and you can't handle it.

I like to say don't draw thick conclusions from thin evidence.
The facts are there are some Egyptologistswho say that Joseph Smith got it wrong.
And that's the facts.
That's pretty thin.
That's a pretty thin fact on which tobase your beliefs about the Book of
Abraham specifically, it's a pretty thinfact on which to base your beliefs about
Joseph Smith's claims to prophethoodgenerally, and that's a pretty thin

(43:47):
fact on which to base whether or notto abandon your covenants ultimately.

Yeah.

Right?
Let's work on that.
Let's think slowly through that.
That's interesting.
What else has been said?
What else do we know, right?
Let's dig deeper.
Let's go into all of it, because Iknow there's believing members of
the church who know all this stuff.
There are believing Egyptologists inthe church that are not rattled by this.
Why not?
Let me go deeper.
Let's find out why.

Yeah.

And I've found, as I've done that, as I've thought slowly
about this, that it always leads tosome sort of satisfying resolution.
That doesn't mean I don'thave questions, still.
It doesn't mean that I'm not waitingfor further light and knowledge on some
things, but there's never been anythingthat I've found, like this, that seems
like a “Checkmate, Joseph Smith,” right?
“You're done, brother.” There's nothingthat, under further study and research

(44:31):
and scrutiny and scholarship, doesn'teventually resolve in a pretty satisfying
way, like we've seen with this today.

So keep calm, and carry on.
Is that the basic messagewe're going for here?

Man, we should put that on a mug.
As we study church history, just sip yourOvaltine from that mug that says, “Keep
calm, carry on, think slow, don't drawthick conclusions from thin evidence,
and let's continue to stay the course.”Yeah, so that's been helpful for me.
That's pretty satisfying for me, inaddition to all the different little

(45:05):
evidences for the Book of Abraham, right?
That, things like you just said,like Ur, like human sacrifice, like
there's a little crocodile on Facsimile1 underneath the jars 8 and 7.
The crocodile is numbered number 9, andit says that it's associated with Pharaoh.
Nobody in Joseph Smith's day thought thecrocodile was associated with Pharaoh.
But later on we find that thecrocodile is associated with Pharaoh.

(45:28):
Just tiny, little things like that, right?
Or on Facsimile 2, there's these fourindividuals, they're called the Four
Sons of Horus, that represent the fourpoints of the compass, which is what
Joseph Smith says that they meant.
And that's interesting, right?
That's like, oh, he got that right.
There's the geocentric view of theuniverse rather than, like, the
Sun-centered view of the universe.

(45:49):
The geocentric view of the universeis how Abraham depicts things, and
that was consistent with Abraham'stime, not Joseph Smith's time.
Kerry makes a big dealabout the plains of Olishem.
In Abraham chapter 1 verse 10,Abraham mentions the Plain of Olishem.
There is no biblical equivalentto the Plain of Olishem.
That phrase, however, has sincebeen discovered in two translations

(46:10):
of ancient texts after the Book ofAbraham was published, the Plains of
Olishem, and associating that withAbraham and during this time period.
There's a bunch ofthings like that, right?
Like, ancient tradition thatAbraham taught astronomy and
sciences to Egyptian priests.
That's not in the Bible, but later on wefind out about that, and that's, again,
post-Joseph Smith translating this.
So there's, like, a hundred of thoselittle things, and there's a ton of little

(46:32):
articles like that on Pearl of GreatPrice Central that you can go check out.

Yeah.

Those aren't what do it for me.
Those don't, like, prove to me that thisis true scripture, but they're helpful.
I like those.
But then when I read thebook, like, it's light.
It's good.
It's beautiful.
It's inspiring.
And so there's multi layers to why Ibelieve the Book of Abraham is authentic
scripture, and they all work togetherfor me to strengthen my testimony.

Yeah, these arguments help towards plausibility.
Like, is it plausible the Book ofAbraham is an ancient document?
I think it totally is.

Yeah.

But when it comes to testimony, when it comes to your belief
in these things, it's a lot like the Bookof Mormon, where, you know, the greatest
witness comes from the Holy Ghost.

Yeah.

But these plausibility arguments are helpful
when it comes down to it, too,because, again, those two things that

we've talked about (47:18):
reason and faith.
“By study and also by faith,” theLord in the Doctrine and Covenants
constantly refers to those astwo major tools that you use.
And sometimes the study partof your brain needs a workout.
Sometimes the faith part ofyour brain needs a workout, too.
You use them two together.

Yeah.

Like I said, on Pearl of Great Price Central, there
is a ton of good stuff to help you.
Like, I'm going to refer to one articlereally quick, which was, were there
autobiographies like this in the ancientworld when Joseph Smith published the
Book of Abraham when it was canonized?
And the answer was, no, we don't reallyhave any other examples like this.
However, in 1939, a documentwas discovered that is

(47:56):
a kind of autobiography.
It's about a guy who lived in thegeneral vicinity, Middle East and
ancient Syria, around the time thatAbraham lived, the guy's name is Idrimi.
I hope I'm saying that right.
I-D-R-I-M-I, Idrimi, and itlines up pretty well with
Abraham's autobiography himself.
For instance, they both talkabout going on journeys.

(48:18):
They both talk about Godleading them to a new homeland.
They both talk about promisesmade to their ancestors.
They both describe covenantsthat God made with them.
In fact, the opening of the Book ofAbraham is “In the land of the Chaldeans,
at the residence of my father's, I,Abraham, saw it was needful for me to
obtain another place of residence.” Theopening line of Edrimi's autobiography

(48:40):
is, “In Aleppo, my ancestral home, I,Edrimi, the son of Elim, Elimia, took
my horse, chariot, and groom, and wentaway.” They even have similar openings.

Wow.

This document wasn't discovered until 1939, a
century after the Book of Abraham.
So that's just one of manyplausibility arguments we have
to say, is this plausible?
Yeah.

Yeah.

Can you gain a witness that it's true just
through plausibility arguments?
That's not how anything works.
You have to gain a spiritualwitness alongside your secular
witness to know if this is true.
And just like you said, there's somebeautiful, beautiful teachings in the
Book of Abraham that make it incrediblyvaluable to our understanding of the
universe, of God, and of our relationshipto God, I think are worth exploring.

We have a former president of BYU–Idaho, Henry J.
Eyring, son of Henry B.
Eyring.
He told me this story once, personally.
He said that at a certain time of hislife, when some of this criticism about
the Book of Abraham was coming out, andhe was wrestling with it, the facsimile
problems we've highlighted today,and his dad was in the Quorum of the
Twelve Apostles, and so he reached outto his dad, and they talked about it.

(49:47):
He laid out all of his concerns,you know, “What about this?
And what about that?” And his dadlistened patiently, and then he said,
“Henry, how do you feel when you readthe Book of Abraham?” And Henry said,
“I feel good.” And Elder Eyring said,“Me, too.” And then he said, “How's
your family?” How are things going?

(50:07):
You know, just kind of changesthe subject, like, as if to
say, that's enough, isn't it?
You're like me.
You can discern the goodnessand the truth and the light
in the Book of Abraham, right?
I love that.
I kind of envy that, actually, alittle bit, because I think there's
some people that are totally okaywith that much, to say, “Hey, I
feel good about the Book of Abraham.

(50:27):
I don't need to get intoall these arguments.
Like, I know it's scripture.
End of story.” And I actually envy that.
I'm not one of those, but I thinkthat's super cool that some people
are just, like, not bothered by anyof this stuff, and that's beautiful,
and their testimony's strong, andthey keep their covenants, and I
think they're going to be just fine.
But then there's other people,like me, that, like, get all
caught up with this kind of stuff.

(50:48):
And I think the Lord was talking aboutpeople like me when he said in D&C 88:118,
He says, “and as all have not faith, seekye out of the best books words of wisdom.
Seek learning, even by study and also byfaith.” That the antidote to not having
faith is to seek learning by study, butalso never forget that faith component.

(51:11):
Like, I feel like there's somethingin my soul that needs scholarship,
that needs well-researched answers.
And that could be a weakness.
I don't know.
D&C 118 seems to say that noteverybody has this implicit faith.
Not everybody can just say,“I feel good about this.” And
the Lord's okay with that.
He just says, no problem.

(51:31):
“Seek ye out of the bestbooks words of wisdom.
Seek learning, even by study andalso by faith.” So, add to your
lack of implicit faith some study.
And I just say to those who are ina position like me that kind of need
this scholarship, like, wonderful.
Go after it.
Dig into it.
Make sure you're getting really solidanswers from those who can actually

(51:51):
answer the questions really well.
But never forget that other piece.
It always needs to be study and faith.
Never let go of that faith piece.

Yeah.

In fact, let me just use the Book of Abraham to give you an
example of what I mean about holdingboth of these together at the same time.
Study and faith.
Reason and revelation.
So let's do study first.
Here's a cool little piece of scholarship.
The word Shinehah shows up in the Bookof Abraham, and that word is associated
with the sun and its path across thesky, which recent research has revealed

(52:24):
was actually an ancient Egyptianword that was used only in Abraham's
day to describe the sun on its path.
That's cool scholarship.
Like, I actually like that a lot.

Yeah.

And I’m going to put that next to what President Eyring said.
Like, I feel good, too, whenI read the Book of Abraham.
I feel good, and scholarship isstrengthening the case of the plausibility
of the historicity of the Book of Abraham.
Like, both of those are reallyhelpful, and, for me, needful.
Some of us need both reason andrevelation, both the scholarship piece

(52:55):
and the undeniable feeling that thisis good and I want to be a better man
because of what I'm reading, you know?

Yeah.

And, again, I just say for people that are kind of in my boat,
don't let go of that second piece.
Like, go get all the scholarshipyou can, but make sure that faith
is always part of the equation.

Amen.

So I think at the end of the day, I like how the Gospel
Topics essay lands the plane on this,and maybe we can end with this today.
“The veracity and value of theBook of Abraham cannot be settled
by scholarly debate concerning thebook's translation and historicity.
The book's status as scripture liesin the eternal truths it teaches
and the powerful spirit it conveys.”

Mm-hmm.

“The Book of Abraham imparts profound truths about the
nature of God, his relationshipto us as his children, and the
purpose of this mortal life.
The truth of the Book of Abraham isultimately found through careful study
of its teachings, sincere prayer,and the confirmation of the spirit.”

Wonderful.
This has been great, Scott.
Thank you so much for your good work,and thanks to all the great scholars
out there who we steal from on aweekly basis, and thanks to you for
hanging in there with us as we gothrough each one of these subjects.
Again, we want to point you towardsPearl of Great Price Central, where
there's a ton of good stuff, and alsoDoctrine & Covenants Central and just

(54:11):
Scripture Central in general, where you'llfind a lot of good materials, articles,
videos, and other resources that youcan use in your study of the scriptures
as you seek to understand, defend, andinterpret the scriptures more accurately.

Thanks, Casey.
Thank you for listening to thisepisode of Church History Matters.
To dig deeper into what we discussedtoday, we recommend beginning with
several excellent short articleson pearlofgreatpricecentral.org.
In our next episode, we'll take a briefpause from the controversies of the
Book of Abraham and dive into what makesit beautiful, what makes its teachings

(54:48):
important, and why it's a criticalpart of the Latter-day Saint canon.
If you're enjoying Church HistoryMatters, we'd appreciate it if you
could take a moment to subscribe, rate,review, and comment on the podcast.
That makes us easier to find.
Today's episode was produced byScott Woodward and edited by Nick
Galieti and Scott Woodward, with shownotes and transcript by Gabe Davis.

(55:09):
Church History Matters is a podcastof Scripture Central, a nonprofit
which exists to help build enduringfaith in Jesus Christ by making
Latter-day Saint scripture and churchhistory accessible, comprehensible,
and defensible to people everywhere.
For more resources to enhance yourgospel study, go to scripturecentral.org,
where everything is availablefor free because of the generous

(55:30):
donations of people like you.
And while we try very hard to behistorically and doctrinally accurate
in what we say on this podcast, pleaseremember that all views expressed in
this and every episode are our viewsalone and do not necessarily reflect the
views of Scripture Central or The Churchof Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Thank you so much for beinga part of this with us.

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