The Cinepro Solution For "The Book Of Abraham"

[Rivers]

I think it is important to note that The Book of Mormon was translated while using something that acted as a prop. Joseph Smith never actually looked that the charactars on the gold plates when translating. He was staring into a seer stone. For all we know, the gold plates in Joseph's position may not have contained the actual Nephite history. I'm not saying that's what I believe, but the details of the Book of Mormon translation provide us a model for the manner in which Joseph produced texts. He received revelation which was converted into writing.

The most confusing thing about the Book of Abraham is those darn facsimiles. But there are enough things that Joseph got correct that should give one pause. For example, the whole four sons of Horus/four quarters of the earth thing is quite impressive.

[Maidservant]

No one even cares about the facsimiles anyway. No one would miss them.

I would .

[Glenn101]

Why not just let's all just make a mad dash for the Community of Christ? They have disavowed the Book of Abraham long ago. And they also deny that Joseph practiced polgamy. It was all Brigham Young's doing. That solves just about all of the problems.

In all actuality, if the Church tried to "sanitize" the Book of Abraham and the polygamy question, it would suffer a mass exodus, in my opinion, to the extent that it would come to look much like the Community of Christ in content as well as numbers.

The Lord could make those hard issues go away, but He will not do so until the time of the Second Coming, again, in my opinion.

Those hard issues are really irrelevant to the issue of the restoration and of Joseph Smith as the prophet of the restoration. That answer can only come from one place.

Glenn

[canard78]

Why not just let's all just make a mad dash for the Community of Christ? They have disavowed the Book of Abraham long ago. And they also deny that Joseph practiced polgamy. It was all Brigham Young's doing. That solves just about all of the problems.

In all actuality, if the Church tried to "sanitize" the Book of Abraham and the polygamy question, it would suffer a mass exodus, in my opinion, to the extent that it would come to look much like the Community of Christ in content as well as numbers.

The Lord could make those hard issues go away, but He will not do so until the time of the Second Coming, again, in my opinion.

Those hard issues are really irrelevant to the issue of the restoration and of Joseph Smith as the prophet of the restoration. That answer can only come from one place.

Glenn

You're probably right. I think the church has done such a good job of setting up the 'all or nothing' divide, which many members are entirely comfortable in, that they would find it very difficult to unravel.

Unfortunately such a hard line means that finding one 'hole in the whole' makes 'all' difficult to accept. It's why, for a while, the holes throughout the origins of the LDS church were enough to make me not be able to accept 'all' and consider 'nothing.'

I'm grateful that I've realised that 'some' doesn't mean 'lukewarm.' My belief in mormon origins is now neither 'all' nor 'nothing' it's 'some,' but my commitment to God and my understanding of who he his and how I should 'be' are not 'lukewarm.'

[Freedom]

We have a 1000 word puzzle but we have only discovered 5 pieces and we feel qualified to determine what the picture should be.

[Alan]

The recent video "

" confirms my suspicions that when it comes to faith crises in the LDS Church, one of the most common issues is The Book of Abraham (at least for guys; I suspect polygamy is the deal killer for women).

There are several apologetic defenses for The Book of Abraham (BoA), all successful to varying degrees. Personally, I find each of them lacking in some critical regard. So I'm pleased to offer a solution for the Church to "The Book of Abraham" problem. It will probably take a while to implement, but if done correctly, I suspect the attrition rate for BoA doubters could be dropped almost to zero. I won't rehash the problems people have with the BoA; read up on it elsewhere if you're not familiar with it.

That being said, here's what the Church needs to do:

Take The Book of Abraham out of Egypt.

Step One: How many people do you know that have left the Church because of The Book of Moses? I've never met one. Yet the Book of Moses is longer than the BoA. It is just as "canonized" and official. It came forth only a few years before the BoA. It's actually quite similar. But no one cares about The Book of Moses. Why is that? Because the Book of Moses is just what it says it it. Joseph Smith was "translating" (or revising) the Bible and he gave us the Book of Moses. That's it. It survives (and is bulletproof) because it claims to be nothing more than a revelation from God.

That's what The Book of Abraham needs to become.

"Question: What is The Book of Abraham?"

"Answer: A revelation to Joseph Smith about the life of Abraham"

"Question: Where did it come from?"

"Answer: Joseph Smith received it through revelation while living in Kirtland in the 1830's."

"Question: But what about this story I heard about mummies and egyptian writing?"

"Answer: Joseph Smith had an interest in ancient and modern languages, including Hebrew, Egyptian, German and others. While his study of Egyptian in Kirtland may be related to the revelation on The Book of Abraham, in spite of speculation at the time, we don't know much about it."

See? It's that easy.

Absolutely not.

The Book of Abraham story is fine as it is.

I look at it like this.

Thousands of years from now some archaeologists find an Xmas card. It depicts a large rotund man with a white beard. He is dressed in red. Also featured is an evergreen tree with red balls on it and a star on the top. The man in red is delivering presents. They correctly identify the card as an item used during the celebation of a winter solstice festival, the origins of which were called Saturnalia. This festival later acquired some religious connotations for some, but for most the basis of the celebration was glutony, drunkenness, office parties, exchanging of expensive gifts, sexual misconduct etc. They correctly identify the prevailing philosophy of the day as Hedonism; and they know this because of an enormous cache of Playboy and Vogue magazines found dating from the same period.

However, a prophet of God examines the card and declares it to be a Christmas card. The man in red symbolises God, the generous giver of gifts. The tree represents the eternal nature of God gifts. The red balls represent the great drops of blood shed by the Saviour in order to provide us with greatest gift of all, eternal life; and the star represents the light of Christ.

Both the archaeologists and the Prophet are 100% correct.

Edited February 23, 2013 by Alan

[canard78]

Absolutely not.

The Book of Abraham story is fine as it is.

I look at it like this.

Thousands of years from now some archaeologists find an Xmas card. It depicts a large rotund man with a white beard. He is dressed in red. Also featured is an evergreen tree with red balls on it and a star on the top. The man in red is delivering presents. They correctly identify the card as an item used during the celebation of a winter solstice festival, the origins of which were called Saturnalia. This festival later acquired some religious connotations for some, but for most the basis of the celebration was glutony, drunkenness, office parties, exchanging of expensive gifts, sexual misconduct etc. They correctly identify the prevailing philosophy of the day as Hedonism; and they know this because of an enormous cache of Playboy and Vogue magazines found dating from the same period.

However, a prophet of God examines the card and declares it to be a Christmas card. The man in red symbolises God, the generous giver of gifts. The tree represents the eternal nature of God gifts. The red balls represent the great drops of blood shed by the Saviour in order to provide us with greatest gift of all, eternal life; and the star represents the light of Christ.

Both the archaeologists and the Prophet at 100% correct.

You're comparing the Book of Abraham to Santa Claus... uh...

[Alan]

You're comparing the Book of Abraham to Santa Claus... uh...

What? Did you read my post?

Edited February 23, 2013 by Alan

[canard78]

What? Did you read my post?

I did, sorry I was being facetious. And given the avatar flag, as a fellow-brit, I should have said Father Christmas.

The interesting thing about your example is that it applies very well to my understanding of the BoA. The archaeologists get it technically (or literally) right. The prophet is finding meaning where it wasn't originally intended. But the metaphor is still effective so the message can still carry weight and influence behaviour. As such, it doesn't matter that the prophet is technically wrong, because the message and reaction to the message is the right outcome. So, in that sense, he's right.

[The Grimace]

Changing the story doesn't change the story.

[volgadon]

Changing the story doesn't change the story.

Which is why I think cinepro's idea is terrible.

[cdowis]

cinepro,

Just another one of your attempts at humor. Thanks, I love it.

Now we can get over the Book of Moses problem by saying that there was death in the five days of creation, and death only stopped on the sixth day. Problem solved!

JS polygamy? He didn't get married, he got sealed.

BOM horses? They were actually deer.

+++++++++++

Please, please somebody stop me!!!!

Edited February 23, 2013 by cdowis

[Alan]

cinepro,

Just another one of your attempts at humor. Thanks, I love it.

Now we can get over the Book of Moses problem by saying that there was death in the five days of creation, and death only stopped on the sixth day. Problem solved!

JS polygamy? He didn't get married, he got sealed.

BOM horses? They were actually deer.

+++++++++++

Please, please somebody stop me!!!!

Oh dear!

[cdowis]

Thanks, I think I pulled myself together.

[Jude2]

Changing the story doesn't change the story.

Amen!

[rameumptom]

Cinepro,

You don't even have to get rid of the facsimiles. You just have to say that Joseph used them as a catalyst for the revelation he received, just as the Bible was a catalyst for the Book of Moses. Note, we do not toss out the Bible because of the Book of Moses, and so we don't need to toss out the fragments of papyri, either, for the same reason.

That done, we easily move on in the discussion of the text, and not the papyri fragments.

[wenglund]

While the Egyptian stuff has caused some members to lose faith, it has caused others of us to grow in faith (it has motivated us to research well beneath the surface of the text and well beyond the confines of the text, where we have found a wealth of spiritual enlightenment).

And, it has been a valuable winnowing devise to separate the wheat from the tares, and separate those who trust in the arm of flesh over God.

So, it is not surprising to find men who seem particularly vulnerably to relying on men, seeking to counsel God about what to remove in relation to sacred scripture, and this in terms of elements that test one's reliance on God. In short, those who may be most prone to failing this particular test of faith, are the one's seeking to get rid of the test.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[wenglund]

I guess I am more concerned about my faith than I am about my membership.

In any case, I don't think we understand the same thing in relation to the phrase "literal origins," particularly when it comes to Joseph Smith's restorations ("translations") of ancient scripture.

...and, to some extent, this divergence in understand can make the difference between belief and disbelief.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[mfbukowski]

Heavenly Father: "Whew, I tried to get these guys to get it right, they finally did."

Jesus Christ: "Finally, they got rid of baggage that's destroying faith in my Church"

Joseph Smith: "Thank you, thank you, thank you...it's been so embarrassing all these years -- especially the God Min thing. Total freudian slip: I must have been influence by Min at least 33 times..."

I know you are banned and can't respond but this is a cheap shot. Joseph used what he saw to derive inspiration from it. What the literal translation is, is irrelevant.

Clearly you know better than this. You have been playing with those bad boys on the other board again haven't you? Shame on you!

[mfbukowski]

Cinepro

Unfortunately the facsimiles give us important keys to the code of the temple ordinances if you know that.

But most don't, and we can't talk about that.

So I say keep the facsimilies and call them what they are- Egyptian Hypocephali which gave him inspiration to receive revelation about the temple. What's so tough about that?

Just add another answer to the list.

[mfbukowski]

While the Egyptian stuff has caused some members to lose faith, it has caused others of us to grow in faith (it has motivated us to research well beneath the surface of the text and well beyond the confines of the text, where we have found a wealth of spiritual enlightenment).

And, it has been a valuable winnowing devise to separate the wheat from the tares, and separate those who trust in the arm of flesh over God.

So, it is not surprising to find men who seem particularly vulnerably to relying on men, seeking to counsel God about what to remove in relation to sacred scripture, and this in terms of elements that test one's reliance on God. In short, those who may be most prone to failing this particular test of faith, are the one's seeking to get rid of the test.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Nailed it.

[mfbukowski]

Changing the story doesn't change the story.

Profound

[mfbukowski]

Additional note: See also D&C 7 where a hidden "parchment" from John the apostle is translated/"translated".

D&C 7

Number of people who have left the Church over Joseph Smith's translation of John's Parchment?

0

Maybe the BoA is translated from a hidden scroll somewhere, and the Kirtland papyri were just mistakenly assumed to be related? Fallible leaders - We don't know!

Straight up- I am glad you are posting stuff that can be taken as "faith promoting" instead of moving in the other direction- it's a good way to see things I think

[mfbukowski]

Personally, I love the Facsimiles. I love the (evil, pagan, blasphemous, primitive, polytheistic, embarrassing) Egyptiany stuff, especially the references to Ma'at and Isis. (Since I'm not in first grade anymore, I've never even gotten particularly giggly about Min.) The Facsimiles, poorly-reproduced as they are, were a major draw for me, since finally here was a Church with a (relatively) open canon that didn't downplay the clear debt to Egypt that both the Old and New Testament have.

I think Nibley and Rhodes and others have demonstrated that there is more going on in the Book of Abraham than critics have tended to give credit for. (Have you read One Eternal Round yet, or are you just bluffing your way through the written portion of your exam while sniffing airily about how obviously wrong the evidence you haven't examined is?) It wouldn't bother me to find out the entirety of the Pearl of Great Price was "just" inspired fiction or pseudepigrapha or targumim or whatever, but it's hardly the open-shut case that's been trending lately.

Also, I gotta put it on record yet again that I'm getting pretty exhausted of the patronizing embarrassment about the "flat-earth" in the Bible, with the constant, never-ending admonitions not to get bogged down in fundamentalist assumptions and the eternal condemnations of the primitive lack of sophistication that, y'know, also (probably just by coincidence) formed the basis for the precursors of western society for thousands of years. I would have absolutely no problem if we had a diagram something like this in our scriptures:

Or better yet -- 'cause it's way more artsy and dramatic and poignant and memorable, which should be exactly the point of teaching aids -- something like this one, which has a bit more of that "Northernness" that C. S. Lewis was so fond of:

Or even better still, maybe we could all do a little more research and realize that the "flat-earth" is (as Dechend and Santillana showed long ago) simply the square made by the four points of the solstices and equinoxes inscribed within the circle of the ecliptic, with the Axis Mundi being the sacred World-Tree Ladder to the North Star/World Nail supported by the Cosmic Mountain and surrounded by the "waters" Above and Below. (The separation of the Primal Parents Heaven and Earth being the falling-apart of the axes of the celestial equator and the ecliptic; the great "flood" which covered the "earth" being the chaotic time of change from one World-Age to another; the "Golden Calf" of Taurus leading to Moses' Two-Horned Aries, leading to Christ's Pisces, etc.)

Of course, if we stopped confusing ourselves with our own presentist assumptions and instead started trying to look at the ancient cosmology more like our ancestors did, ie:

... then we wouldn't get that nice pleasant frisson of modernist superiority, and where's the fun in that?

Edited to tone down the annoyed snark somewhat.

Great stuff.

There is a quote somewhere from one of the apostles - it was Richard Scott- too lazy to look up the quote though- about imagining the altar of the temple as the apex of a great cone reaching into the universe with spirits circling and coming and going into this cone.

The LA temple, in the last room before the veil, has a circular ceiling above the altar with twelve golden vesica picis (s) radiating from the center, and around its perimeters is an interlocked "figure 8" motif that is really connected symbols for infinity- like if you drew an 8 and instead of lifting the pencil to draw another, just letting one loop connect to the next etc. The implication to me is eternity upon eternity- that motif is everywhere in that temple.

Reminded me of your "cosmic cones" above.... Thanks for that post. Dunno where you get this stuff, but it's a good place. --- mostly! Gotta always give you a little hard time you know- it helps you think stuff through!

Edit:

Ok found it

https://www.lds.org/...e-most?lang=eng

Sometimes when I hear a choir during a temple dedicatory service, I experience a feeling so sublime that it elevates my heart and mind. I close my eyes, and more than once, in my mind, I have seen an inverted cone of individuals beginning at the temple and rising upward. I have felt that they represent many spirits waiting for the vicarious work to be done for them in that sanctuary, rejoicing because finally there is a place that can free them from the chains that hold them back in their eternal progress.

Now what if Joseph had thought that also and drawn a picture of it? What would people make of that?

Edited February 25, 2013 by mfbukowski

[cinepro]

Changing the story doesn't change the story.

I don't advocate "changing the story".

If you love the facsimiles and consider them doctrinal, then great! No one's saying you can't. Giving someone the freedom to not believe something doesn't take away someone else's freedom to believe.

Right now, the way the BoA is presented in the Church sets up a bump-set for the anti-mormons to "spike". We're doing half their work for them. If we took away the "bump-set", the BoA would still be just as wonderful and inspiring and doctrinal and informative and canonized as it always has been (well, since it was canonized).

For me, the most damaging work being done against the Book of Abraham is the fact that apologists can't even agree on the most basic line of defense.

LDS intellectuals (not necessarily an oxymoron!) have offered two different responses. One approach is to challenge the allegation that the source of the Book of Abraham has been found. In my opinion, the evidence casts reasonable doubt on the theory that the Book of Breathings is the source, and points to a missing scroll not found among the current collections (a scroll that may have been among the papyri that Combs sold to the St. Louis Museum and which were later sent to the Chicago Museum, which museum burned in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871). Other LDS thinkers have no trouble with the Book of Breathings as the original source (in some ways, it offers a simpler explanation than the missing scroll theory), but believe that Joseph's "translation" represents an inspired restoration of a long-lost original document, with the Book of Breathings serving as a catalyst of some kind for the revelation of Abraham's original text.

http://www.jefflinds...Q_Abraham.shtml

Having two weak theories regarding the origin of the Book of Abraham do not add up to one strong theory (especially when there is a third not-so-kind theory that seems to make more sense to some LDS).

If we can focus on the revelatory nature of the scripture totally independent of any of the Egyptological trappings, it makes these defenses unnecessary (but they can still be useful). While there will still be attacks against the BoA, their number and effectiveness would be roughly in line with the number of attacks on the Book of Moses. Which is how many...?

Edited February 25, 2013 by cinepro