Saints Unscripted on the Book of Abraham

[Rivers]

I apologize for another Book of Abraham thread but this is a fascinating topic for me right now.

David Snell offers three theories for the Book of Abraham:

1.  Its a translation from the papyrus we have now.

2. Its a translation from missing papyri.

3. Its a revelation and the papyri was only a catalyst.

 

Snell disregards the first theory.   He claims we have historical eyewitness evidence that the source of the BOA was not part of the papyri we now have.   But I have watched a couple of presentations from Robin Jensen and Brian Hauglid and they both make a compelling case that the JS papyri we have was the source Joseph used.  This video doesn't touch on those arguments. 

If Hauglid, Jensen, Vogel, and others are right, then the only option for a believing member of the church  would be a combination of theories one and three.  Joseph did use the now-surviving papyri as the BOA source while receiving revelation.  So basically Joseph and the other men working with him were doing really bad 19th century scholarship yet somehow ended up with an inspired text.

 

Edited July 23, 2020 by Rivers

[Calm]

Brian Hauglid.

[Calm]

Rivers, I have not listened to Hauglid's podcast, so it may be possible he deals with the below for the argument of missing papyri (I am not including the additional argument dealing with the mathematical formula of Dr. Gee's as I believe there is an error in it as I did the substitutions of variables myself and I haven't seen an updated text dealing with that, but these comments below seem independent of that argument and so imo are still valid based on what I have seen...I am open to being wrong because I have not seen everything):

Quote

Kerry Muhelstein and Megan Hansen described the evidence supporting the theory that the long roll was the source for the Book of Abraham:

One of the most pressing questions concerning the Book of Abraham has to do with its very origin. What was the source of Joseph’s translation? This question became more important when the Metropolitan Museum of New York revealed that it had obtained some of the papyri Joseph Smith had owned, including Facsimile 1. They gave these papyri—known as the Joseph Smith Papyri—to the Church, and fervor over the Book of Abraham ensued. The texts on these papyrus fragments were translated as versions of common Egyptian funerary texts. The text adjacent to Facsimile 1 was a copy of the Book of Breathings, a composition which was designed to help the deceased reach his desired goals in the afterlife. 

Once the existence of the papyri had been made public, the immediate assumption was that text adjacent to Facsimile 1 must have been the text from which Joseph Smith translated the Book of Abraham. The idea that the text adjacent to Facsimile 1 was the source of the Book of Abraham was a tantalizing supposition. Because we now have the ability to translate such texts, this idea appealed to Mormon and non-Mormon alike; the former group anxious to have some palpable proof of the prophet’s inspiration and the latter wanting evidence against his revelatory ability. Although many in both groups are still unaware of it, their hopes were based on an assumption, and a problematic assumption at that. While at first glance it seems reasonable to assume that the text adjoining Facsimile 1 would be the place to look for the source of the Book of Abraham, there are many reasons to discard this assumption. The six most salient follow: 
 

1. Even with modern publication software and technology, we often are not able to place an illustration right next to the text with which it is associated. Hence when textbooks say “see figure 3.2,” that figure is often on a different page. Even with the sophisticated electronic layout abilities we have developed, when I ask my students how many of them have textbooks in which this is the case, almost every hand goes up. This dissonance between text and picture is even more pronounced with ancient papyri; it is common to find the picture (on Egyptian papyri we call them vignettes) some distance from the text. [7] Such incongruity was especially endemic to the Ptolemaic era, the time period during which the Joseph Smith Papyri were created, [8] and to the type of text we find next to Facsimile 1. [9] In this case, the Joseph Smith Papyri turns out to be exactly like most papyri of its day.
2. Furthermore, during the time period in which the Joseph Smith Papyri were created, it was common not only for the text and its accompanying picture to be separated from each other, but also for the wrong vignette to be associated with a text, or for vignettes and texts to be completely misaligned on a long scroll. [10] The content of a vignette and the content of the text frequently lack any apparent connection. [11] This is particularly common in Books of Breathing, the type of text which is adjacent to Facsimile 1 on the Joseph Smith Papyri. [12]
3. There is no known case of any vignette remotely like Facsimile 1 that is associated with the type of text that is adjacent to it. No other copies of the Book of Breathings contain anything similar. Based on ancient parallels to the Book of Breathings, the most likely conclusion is that the picture next to the text was not associated with the text.
4. The Book of Abraham itself says that the fashion (or drawing) of the idolatrous gods is “at the beginning” (Abraham 1:14), presumably of the record or papyrus on which the text is recorded. This statement seems to indicate that the vignette depicting the altar and idols is not adjacent to the text, but some distance from it—at the beginning. We do not know whether it was Abraham or a later scribe who created the drawing and inserted the statement. Furthermore, in the oldest Book of Abraham manuscripts we have, this phrase was inserted after the rest of the text was written, meaning that Joseph or his scribes likely inserted it as they were preparing to publish the text. We cannot tell who wrote this line.
5. A few accounts indicate that the source of the Book of Abraham had some Hebrew characters on it. [13] None of the fragments we have today contain any Hebrew characters. Thus we must conclude that the eyewitnesses were describing texts other than those we now possess.
6. Finally, eyewitness accounts from Joseph Smith’s day agree that the Book of Abraham was on the long roll. Through museum documents we can corroborate that the long roll was sold to the Chicago museum. Unfortunately, it was destroyed by fire in 1871. [14]The small portion on the outside of that roll seems to have been cut off and mounted for its protection (it is always the outermost edge of a scroll that is damaged the most, and Joseph must have felt that this damaged piece needed preservation efforts). Because this part of the scroll was glued to paper that dates back to the Kirtland period, [15] and eyewitness accounts agree that the Book of Abraham was translated from the large roll after the fragments had been cut off, [16] eyewitnesses of the papyri during the Nauvoo period did not think that the fragments we have today contained the Book of Abraham. Again, we are forced to conclude from the historical evidence at hand that the fragments we now have are not the source of the Book of Abraham.

Given the problems with the assumption that the text surrounding Facsimile 1 was the source of the Book of Abraham and the fact that we possess only a small percentage of the original papyrus roll on which Facsimile 1 was drawn (perhaps about 5 percent), we must conclude that it is most unlikely and foolhardy to insist that the text adjoining Facsimile 1 must be the text of the Book of Abraham. Yet critics insist on this faulty assumption. 

This brings up the question of how much papyri Joseph Smith had, and especially how long the papyrus with Facsimile 1 might have been. The fragments we have today (which contain Facsimile 1 and the adjacent text) consist of less than two feet when pieced together. But how long was the scroll originally, and did it contain the source of the Book of Abraham? 

We know from eyewitnesses that Joseph had “two papyrus rolls, besides some other ancient Egyptian writings.” [17] From the surviving papyri, we can identify five different ancient owners, indicating that there were at least five different sets of papyri. A variety of accounts establish that at least two of these were sizable scrolls. Other contemporary witnesses describe a number of fragments of papyrus contained under glass, [18] a “long roll” reportedly containing the Book of Abraham, [19] as well as “another roll.” [20]Thus our available historical evidence establishes the existence of a fair-sized scroll, another longer scroll, and several other pieces of papyri. The bulk of the writing must have been on the two rolls of papyrus.

https://www.fairmormon.org/answers/Book_of_Abraham/Joseph_Smith_Papyri/Text#Question:_What_is_the_Book_of_Abraham_.22Missing_Papyrus_theory.22.3F

[Rivers]

2 hours ago, Calm said:

Brian Hauglid.

Oops.  Thanks for the correction. Fixed it.

[Kenngo1969]

Yeah, okay.  Perhaps, whatever Joseph Smith had, and/or whatever we have or don't have, served as a catalyst.  But if Joseph Smith actually was translating ... something ... (even if "translation" as Joseph used that word doesn't involve mere straightforward rendering of one language into another) it doesn't make sense (at least, it doesn't to me) that he would limit himself to what we have now.

In the case of the lost 116 pages of the manuscript of the Book of Mormon, the actual people who wrote what Joseph Smith purported to translate wrote, essentially, "The Lord has commanded me to make this record.  That commandment doesn't make sense to me, since someone else already has written/written about the same thing, but it is wisdom in God that I make this record, so that's why I'm doing it."  Not so with the Book of Abraham.  Different culture, different circumstances, and so on and so forth, so perhaps that explains the difference between the two records, but still ...

Of course, if one favors the expansion theory, it really doesn't matter, but still ...

[Robert F. Smith]

11 hours ago, Rivers said:

...........................................

1.  Its a translation from the papyrus we have now.

2. Its a translation from missing papyri.

3. Its a revelation and the papyri was only a catalyst.

.....................................

Those are not in fact the actual choices.  #1 is not a claim that the BofA is a translation from a papyrus we have now, but rather is a claim that the BofA is a false translation of a papyrus we have now (therefore self-contradictory).  There is no way to prove #2, except to point out that there are indeed missing papyri,  and that the BofA is not a translation of any known papyrus.  Like #1, #3 is a contradiction in terms, because claiming something is a "revelation" is tantamount to declaring it the word of God.  Whether a papyrus somewhere was the catalyst is just another unproven assumption.

All three claims are based on apriori assumptions of the various commentators, be they Snell, Jensen, Hauglid, Vogel, or whomever.  By themselves they get us nowhere.  We might regard them as three working hypotheses perhaps, but then how do we go about analyzing those competing hypotheses?  Do those doing the analysis have any of the requisite tools?  Do they know anything about the ancient world generally, or of Egyptology specifically?

I ask that question for the same reason that Hugh Nibley told a fictional story about someone discovering a diamond in an unlikely place.  Analysts spent all their time and energy arguing over whether it was likely that a diamond could come from such a place.  They ignored the simplest solution, which is to take the rock to a jeweler to see if it is in fact a diamond.  Nibley had in mind the Book of Mormon controversy at that time, but the notion is equally applicable to the BofA.

Edited July 23, 2020 by Robert F. Smith

[CA Steve]

8 hours ago, Calm said:

Rivers, I have not listened to Hauglid's podcast, so it may be possible he deals with the below for the argument of missing papyri (I am not including the additional argument dealing with the mathematical formula of Dr. Gee's as I believe there is an error in it as I did the substitutions of variables myself and I haven't seen an updated text dealing with that, but these comments below seem independent of that argument and so imo are still valid based on what I have seen...I am open to being wrong because I have not seen everything):

Hi Calm,

The crux of the issue here; is do we or do we not have the papyri from which Joseph Smith derived the Book of Abraham? If, as many believe, the extant Hor scroll was where Joseph Smith thought Abr1-2:18 was located, then the arguments you present above are moot. Contrary to Robert's assertion above, if the textual and historical records show that the Hor scroll is the origin of the BoA text, then Egyptological  questions are mostly just background questions and translations that have already been answered. There is very little dispute about what the actual Hor scroll says and what its original purpose was. The onus, in my view, is upon those who think the BoA came from a missing scroll to refute the historians and textual analyst's work which has shown it to be from the Hor scroll. So far I have not seen anything challenging Hauglid's, Jensen's, (and a host of other scholars at the JSPP) Vogel's, Smith's, Cooks' ,Grey, and others work which strongly  argue for the Hor scroll on historical and textual basis.

[Calm]

45 minutes ago, CA Steve said:

Hi Calm,

The crux of the issue here; is do we or do we not have the papyri from which Joseph Smith derived the Book of Abraham? If, as many believe, the extant Hor scroll was where Joseph Smith thought Abr1-2:18 was located, then the arguments you present above are moot. Contrary to Robert's assertion above, if the textual and historical records show that the Hor scroll is the origin of the BoA text, then Egyptological  questions are mostly just background questions and translations that have already been answered. There is very little dispute about what the actual Hor scroll says and what its original purpose was. The onus, in my view, is upon those who think the BoA came from a missing scroll to refute the historians and textual analyst's work which has shown it to be from the Hor scroll. So far I have not seen anything challenging Hauglid's, Jensen's, (and a host of other scholars at the JSPP) Vogel's, Smith's, Cooks' ,Grey, and others work which strongly  argue for the Hor scroll on historical and textual basis.

What are the textual evidences?

[Rivers]

This is one of the presentations I watched.  Hauglid and Jensen are discussing their work on the BOA volume of the JSP project.   Hauglid explicitly expresses his disagreement with the missing papyrus theory while Jensen seems to be on the same page.   The argument is that there is too much of a relationship between the Hor scroll, the KEP, and the BOA text.  

What I found most interesting is how Jensen explains thst Joseph’s attempted scholarly work fits into a wider context of early 19th century  attempts to decipher Egyptian.  

 

[Robert F. Smith]

1 hour ago, CA Steve said:

Hi Calm,

The crux of the issue here; is do we or do we not have the papyri from which Joseph Smith derived the Book of Abraham? If, as many believe, the extant Hor scroll was where Joseph Smith thought Abr1-2:18 was located, then the arguments you present above are moot. Contrary to Robert's assertion above, if the textual and historical records show that the Hor scroll is the origin of the BoA text, then Egyptological  questions are mostly just background questions and translations that have already been answered. There is very little dispute about what the actual Hor scroll says and what its original purpose was. The onus, in my view, is upon those who think the BoA came from a missing scroll to refute the historians and textual analyst's work which has shown it to be from the Hor scroll. So far I have not seen anything challenging Hauglid's, Jensen's, (and a host of other scholars at the JSPP) Vogel's, Smith's, Cooks' ,Grey, and others work which strongly  argue for the Hor scroll on historical and textual basis.

That pretty well states what the basic claim is, even though it makes the additional claim that Joseph actually believed Abr 1 -2 was based on the Hor Sensen text, even though it plays with psychohisory and attempts to read Joseph's mind.  The evidence for the basic claim is very thin, and assumes that Joseph's scribes were following Joseph's direction in placing glyphs opposite BofA text as a means to produce the BofA.  The argument is circular and regressive simply because the BofA text likely preceded the production of those sheets with glyphs added.  On the other hand, it would not surprise us if Joseph wished to create a pony or tool for reading future Egyptian texts.  Certainly the School of the Prophets had introduced to the Brethren the use of professional grammars (Hurwitz, Seixas, et al).  Makes sense to create a GAEL.

The major problem, which less careful readers ignore, is that the actual text of the BofA does not refer to the Hor Sensen Papyrus illustration 1, but rather to something Chaldean (non-Egyptian).  What we have is the selection by a Jewish tradent of an Egyptian illustration which is merely analogous.  Scholars are supposed to read texts closely, which Jensen, Hauglid, Vogel, et al. failed to do.  Indeed, they never even address the question.  Why?  Probably because they made apriori assumptions at the outset, exactly as Sterling McMurrin used to do.

McMurrin frankly stated that angels just don't give books to people.  It's as simple as that.  A very reasonable assumption, but not one based on careful analysis of the BofM text.

[Calm]

5 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

The evidence for the basic claim is very thin, and assumes that Joseph's scribes were following Joseph's direction in placing glyphs opposite BofA text as a means to produce the BofA. 

Robert, what of the issue that after the first ten or so glyphs, the placement of the glyphs are not in order but jump all over the page?

As explained in this 11 minute  clip.  I want to be sure I understand the implications and am not making assumptions or missing any:

https://venue.streamspot.com/video/6ebe7e0da0

 

[CA Steve]

3 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

The argument is circular and regressive simply because the BofA text likely preceded the production of those sheets with glyphs added

Hi Robert.

I do not believe the BoA text preceded the those sheets at all, nor do any of the authors I mentioned above, in fact that seems to be why Hauglid has changed his position from 2010 when he advocated for non extant pre-existing BoA text on which the KEP  was based to now when he along with Jensen and all the other people involved with the JSPP  BoAvolume argues in the that at best the KEP and the BoA manuscripts were a concurrent work and in all probability the KEP  preceded the actual text of Abr:1-2:18. The Church obviously agreed with him too in that they published the JSPP BoA volume.

I wonder if you have had the opportunity to read the Mat Grey's chapter in the recently released Producing Ancient Scripture: Joseph Smith's Translation Projects in the Development of Mormon Christianity? I am still awaiting my copy but i understand he conclusively shows how the parts of the BoA were translated in Nauvoo in 1842 by showing the dependency of the BoA on the Seixas grammar, a book that JS did not have access to until after the KEP was produced? This alone shows that the BoA was not a reverse engineering project but was done before parts of the BoA were finished.

[webbles]

18 minutes ago, CA Steve said:

Hi Robert.

I do not believe the BoA text preceded the those sheets at all, nor do any of the authors I mentioned above, in fact that seems to be why Hauglid has changed his position from 2010 when he advocated for non extant pre-existing BoA text on which the KEP  was based to now when he along with Jensen and all the other people involved with the JSPP  BoAvolume argues in the that at best the KEP and the BoA manuscripts were a concurrent work and in all probability the KEP  preceded the actual text of Abr:1-2:18. The Church obviously agreed with him too in that they published the JSPP BoA volume.

I wonder if you have had the opportunity to read the Mat Grey's chapter in the recently released Producing Ancient Scripture: Joseph Smith's Translation Projects in the Development of Mormon Christianity? I am still awaiting my copy but i understand he conclusively shows how the parts of the BoA were translated in Nauvoo in 1842 by showing the dependency of the BoA on the Seixas grammar, a book that JS did not have access to until after the KEP was produced? This alone shows that the BoA was not a reverse engineering project but was done before parts of the BoA were finished.

Where does it say that in the JSPP BoA volume?  I've so far only seen instances where it says that we don't know which came first or when they were done.  And reading the volume and looking at the character correlation, it really doesn't look like the BoA is based off of the KEP.  According to the volume, the characters in both sets have almost no overlap (except for a later BoA manuscript that is definitely after the original BoA manuscripts).  And none of them have any overlap with the characters in the hieroglyphs.

[CA Steve]

4 hours ago, Calm said:

What are the textual evidences?

Have you read the JSPP volume on the BoA? Or perhaps you might be familiar with Chris Smith's article The Dependence of Abraham 1:1-3 on the Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar, or Robert Ritner's article Translation and Historicity of the Book of Abraham” — A Response or Mat Grey's article in Producing Ancient Scripture: Joseph Smith's Translation Projects in the Development of Mormon Christianity?

These are just starting points for the historical and textual dependence of the BoA on the KEP.

[Calm]

Quote

TheChurch obviously agreed with him too in that they published the JSPP BoA volume.

Maybe, maybe not. I got the impression from some behind the scenes chatter (just a little so I may be wrong) that the approach of leadership was hands off the scholars for the scholarly work. 
 

If it becomes the standard in the Gospel Topics, then I would definitely say the “Church” agrees with him. Otherwise, I suggest caution in assuming that.  

[Robert F. Smith]

3 hours ago, CA Steve said:

Hi Robert.

I do not believe the BoA text preceded the those sheets at all, nor do any of the authors I mentioned above, in fact that seems to be why Hauglid has changed his position from 2010 when he advocated for non extant pre-existing BoA text on which the KEP  was based to now when he along with Jensen and all the other people involved with the JSPP  BoAvolume argues in the that at best the KEP and the BoA manuscripts were a concurrent work and in all probability the KEP  preceded the actual text of Abr:1-2:18. The Church obviously agreed with him too in that they published the JSPP BoA volume.

I wonder if you have had the opportunity to read the Mat Grey's chapter in the recently released Producing Ancient Scripture: Joseph Smith's Translation Projects in the Development of Mormon Christianity? I am still awaiting my copy but i understand he conclusively shows how the parts of the BoA were translated in Nauvoo in 1842 by showing the dependency of the BoA on the Seixas grammar, a book that JS did not have access to until after the KEP was produced? This alone shows that the BoA was not a reverse engineering project but was done before parts of the BoA were finished.

Thanks for calling that new volume just out from Univ of Utah Press to my attention.  I had heard that Matt Grey had an important article forthcoming, and it's nice to find that it is out.  I'll have to consider his POV.  Whether it is "conclusive" is of course at issue.  That said, Matt Grey is certainly a fine scholar.

However, the claim that "the Church obviously agreed with" Hauglid et al is a fallacy in that it attributes to a religious organization a POV which only a person or persons may have.  That is the pathetic fallacy.  The JSP Project is staffed and run by people, and Church Essays are written by people.  In many cases we know which people have done the writing.  They represent individual human points of view, not necessarily the POV of some church or church organization -- which cannot have POVs..

Edited July 24, 2020 by Robert F. Smith

[Robert F. Smith]

6 hours ago, Calm said:

Robert, what of the issue that after the first ten or so glyphs, the placement of the glyphs are not in order but jump all over the page?

As explained in this 11 minute  clip.  I want to be sure I understand the implications and am not making assumptions or missing any:

https://venue.streamspot.com/video/6ebe7e0da0

That 2010 presentation is easy to follow and correct.  One has only to follow the glyph and text presentation in Abraham Manuscripts 1 thru 4 to see that.  Moreover, as Gee has pointed out, there is a dittography at page bottom in Abr MS 2 in the hand of F. G. Williams.  A dittography only occurs when someone is copying from an already extant MS (Gee, Intro to the BofA, 17,30).  Hauglid notes the same dittography on p. 81 of his 2010 Textual History of the BofA (Maxwell Institute) -- with photocopies of all those pages clearly shown and transcribed, the same as in the Joseph Smith Papers Project version of that same work.

As Gee demonstrated, the old Heward-Tanner theory that the glyphs were taken in sequence from the Hor Sensen Papyrus just doesn't work.  If Joseph and his scribes actually believed that, why would they not take the glyphs in proper order?  Something is fundamentally wrong with the theory.

[Calm]

58 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

As Gee demonstrated, the old Heward-Tanner theory that the glyphs were taken in sequence from the Hor Sensen Papyrus just doesn't work.  If Joseph and his scribes actually believed that, why would they not take the glyphs in proper order?  Something is fundamentally wrong with the theory.

So what are the implications of this?  This is where I don’t do well because I look at stuff one at a time (most BoA articles that I remember deal with one issue and do not do big picture very well)  and find it difficult to pull everything together. I don’t want to overstate implications, but I don’t want to understate them either. 

Edited July 24, 2020 by Calm

[Calm]

Just to be clear, one would naturally assume if the text of the BoA came from the glyphs, the glyphs would proceed one after the other or at least the text would follow the same order as the placement of the glyphs on the scroll.  But some later glyphs in the KEP are placed  scrollwise before some of the earlier KEP glyphs. One does not write a translation of glyphs by randomly selecting whatever glyph appeals on a section of a scroll, but proceeds across the page or down/up I suppose if one believe the glyphs were written in that direction.

From FM:

Quote

In some instances, one Egyptian character seems to yield several sentences of English text. From what may be surmised from the "Kirtland Egyptian Papers" the surviving Egyptian papyri are claimed by critics to be the source for the Book of Abraham. 

 If Joseph assumed a direct correspondence between glyph and text, then why the randomness for later glyphs?

Edited July 24, 2020 by Calm

[webbles]

2 hours ago, Calm said:

So what are the implications of this?  This is where I don’t do well because I look at stuff one at a time (most BoA articles that I remember deal with one issue and do not do big picture very well)  and find it difficult to pull everything together. I don’t want to overstate implications, but I don’t want to understate them either. 

I remember seeing something where they refuted this "out-of-order" glyphs.  The reasoning (that I remember) was that the glyphs that are in the BoA come from the missing tears/rips.  These "out-of-order" glyphs supposedly don't match any of the existing glyphs on the papyrus.  Looking through the JSPP book, the "out-of-order" glyphs are not given a corresponding glyph on the papyrus.

[InCognitus]

6 minutes ago, webbles said:

I remember seeing something where they refuted this "out-of-order" glyphs.  The reasoning (that I remember) was that the glyphs that are in the BoA come from the missing tears/rips.  These "out-of-order" glyphs supposedly don't match any of the existing glyphs on the papyrus.  Looking through the JSPP book, the "out-of-order" glyphs are not given a corresponding glyph on the papyrus.

So we have another missing papyri (pieces) theory.

[webbles]

Another odd thing I noticed while looking at the glyphs is that the first two manuscripts (A and B) in the JSPP don't have Abraham 1:1-3 while C does.  C has three extra glyphs for those three extra verses (though, not a 1-1 correlation between verses and glyphs).  According to the JSPP, those first three glyphs are the only glyphs that are also in the KEP.  The rest of the glyphs in manuscript C match all of the glyphs in manuscript A and B and none of them are in the KEP.

[Calm]

13 minutes ago, webbles said:

I remember seeing something where they refuted this "out-of-order" glyphs.  The reasoning (that I remember) was that the glyphs that are in the BoA come from the missing tears/rips.  These "out-of-order" glyphs supposedly don't match any of the existing glyphs on the papyrus.  Looking through the JSPP book, the "out-of-order" glyphs are not given a corresponding glyph on the papyrus.

I don’t think that is accurate. Watch the link I posted. It shows where the glyphs are. 

[Storm Rider]

22 hours ago, Rivers said:

I apologize for another Book of Abraham thread but this is a fascinating topic for me right now.

David Snell offers three theories for the Book of Abraham:

1.  Its a translation from the papyrus we have now.

2. Its a translation from missing papyri.

3. Its a revelation and the papyri was only a catalyst.

 

Snell disregards the first theory.   He claims we have historical eyewitness evidence that the source of the BOA was not part of the papyri we now have.   But I have watched a couple of presentations from Robin Jensen and Brian Hauglid and they both make a compelling case that the JS papyri we have was the source Joseph used.  This video doesn't touch on those arguments. 

If Hauglid, Jensen, Vogel, and others are right, then the only option for a believing member of the church  would be a combination of theories one and three.  Joseph did use the now-surviving papyri as the BOA source while receiving revelation.  So basically Joseph and the other men working with him were doing really bad 19th century scholarship yet somehow ended up with an inspired text.

 

I think we all get caught up in tangents that capture our interest and we pursue them. Thus, I can both understand and respect your interest in any topic. 

Early in my reading of scripture - the OT and NT in particular - I recognized that each book had a specific name and thus each book was written by that specific individual. Then as I entered my teens I came to understand that that deduction was incorrect and that the Bible was written not by many, but maybe just a relatively few individuals. Even then I did not get caught up in a pursuit of trying to determine who wrote what and how we might know of such a thing. I just took the Bible to be scripture because I had read it.

I do much the same thing with the latter-day scripture - BofM, D&C, and BofA - I believe them because I have read them and they inspired me, seemed to bring me closer to our Father in Heaven when I read them. Further, I received several witnesses that they were true. 

As a result, my interest in these types of topics don't hold my attention on a personal level. I recognize that such a position as mine is not scholarly or reflective of a broadly inquisitive mind. But as time has passed, I find that I still search for truth, but I do it more often than not out of the study of other religions, their holy individuals, and books of scripture. To be honest, I seek for truth without trying to determine if a "book" is true, but seek after the kernels of truth found by looking. 

May you continue your search and find those kernels of truth you seek where'er they may be. 

[webbles]

17 minutes ago, Calm said:

I don’t think that is accurate. Watch the link I posted. It shows where the glyphs are. 

I watched the link.  The JSPP doesn't connect those glyphs the same way.  It just says those glyphs are not on the papyrus.  I'm going to have to find that other "Book of Breathing for Horos" and see what the missing glyphs are and if they look similar to what is in the manuscripts.