Book Of Abraham

For me, the Book of Abraham is one of the biggest reasons for losing my testimony. It is what gave me real reason to doubt the Book of Mormon and study everything I could about its translation.

• In the description of the BoA it states that it was written by the hand of Abraham while he was in Egypt.

We know for a fact that is not true. It was written many centuries after Abraham lived. 

• It gives direct translations from the images on the papyrus. 

ALL of Joseph's translations are completely bogus. What makes it look worse it that Joseph Smith undertook the task of de-coding the Egyptian alphabet. His work can be seen, and it is absolute, incoherent nonsense. It sounds like a child making things up as they go. 

Please see for yourself: 

http://josephsmithpapers.org/paperSummary/grammar-and-alphabet-of-the-egyptian-language-circa-july-circa-december-1835?p=59#!/paperSummary/grammar-and-alphabet-of-the-egyptian-language-circa-july-circa-december-1835&p=61

Some of my favorites are:

• Hoeoophahphaheh:  Patriarchal government; or authority; a land governed according to the pattern or order given to the patriarchs or fathers; rules and laws <of a goverment> administered by the direction of Heaven or God. a people living under the law<s> of the gospel: or that law by which they may be sanctified and see the face of God.
• Toan low ee tahee takee toues: under the Sun: under heaven; downward; pointing downward going downward; stooping down going down in<to> another place,= any place: going down into the grave— going down into misery= even Hell; coming down in lineage by royal descent, in a line  by onitas one of the royal families of the Kings the of Egypt.
• Zub Zoal eh: In the days of the firstpa trarch of patriarchs In the reign of Adam; in the days of the first patriarchs; in the days of Nooh; in the blessings of  Noah; in the blessings of the children of Noah; in the first blessings of men; in the first blessings of the church:

NOTE: He used Zub, Zub Zoal, Zab, Zip Ziz, ect.. many times with many different definitions. 

• Zab: eh Having been within= in the earth= in the sea; in any thing; b[e]ing applied to any condition or situation, to express one thing <or principle> or being in another.
• Zub: a road or a highway; leading up or to: the time for going up to the altar to worship: <going up before the Lord.> bing caught up, going to be caught up, having been caught up.
• Zab zoal: From the beinng [beginning] of the creation until now; pointing out or designating at the present time; having foreordained, or decreed or having before seen; For instance: Abraham haveing been chosen before was sent by commandment into the Land of Canaan: Having preached the gospel unto the heathen, was fore warned of God to go down into Ah=meh= strah, or Egypt, and preach the gospel 
• Zool— from any or some fixed period of time back to the beginning of creation showing the chronology of the patriarchs the right of thepriesthood, and the lneage through whom it shall be con tinu[e]d by promise, begining at Abraham signifying the promises made to Abraham  saying through thy fruits, or the seed of thy loins, shall the gospel shall be preached, unto all the seed meaning  from Noah, and unto all the kindreds of the earth.
• Zi: most virtuous, comely and beautiful, modest and chaste, being taught most perfectly and upright.
• Zi oop hah— A young virgin unmarried woman

Next time you see a good looking young lady you can call her a Zi oop hah! Thats hot!

• Ho-e-oop:  A prince of the royal blood a true desendant from Ham, the son of Noah, and inheritor of the Kingly blessings from under the hand of Noah, but not according to the priestly blessing, because of the trangrissions of Ham, which blessing fell upon Shem from under the hand of Noah

Note: Joseph loved the phrase, "Descendant of Ham" He used that to describe the "ancient person" who wrote the Kinderhook plates as well. 

• Ziss Zi: -is the same of the fourth only increases or lessens five degrees. 

There is a lot of talk about degrees, I am not sure what that is all about. 

• Ha e oop hah— honor by birth, kingly powerby the line of Pharoah. possession by birth one who riegns upon his throne universally— possessor of heaven and earth
• Kiah broam = Kiah brah oam = zub zool oan
• Ho oop hah Queen Kah tou mun, a distinction of Royal <female> lineage or descent, from her whom Egypt was discovered while it was under water, who was the daughter of Ham.

So was God just messing with Joseph, or was Joseph messing with us?  I personally think that he made this up, and that he made up everything else. I know that the church teaches people to be good, but good can be found all around us. I don't need to give myself to a false religion in order to be a happy, nice, person/good parent.  Name one christian religion that teaches people to to mean, steal, cheat, or that preaches against the family. Not even Atheists promote those things. I don't believe that salvation is gained through doctrines of Joseph Smith or that the baptisms of good, faithful people around the world are discounted because they were not performed by an imaginary priesthood. 

Here is what Scholars that have looked at the BOA have to say:

• Dr. Arthur Mace, Assistant Curator for the Department of Egyptian Art of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York: 

The Book of Abraham, it is hardly necessary to say, is a pure fabrication. Cuts 1 and 3 are inaccurate copies of well known scenes on funeral papyri, and cut 2 is a copy of one of the magical discs which in the late Egyptian period were placed under the heads of mummies. There were about forty of these latter known in museums and they are all very similar in character. Joseph Smith's interpretation of these cuts is a farrago of nonsense from beginning to end. Egyptian characters can now be read almost as easily as Greek, and five minutes' study in an Egyptian gallery of any museum should be enough to convince any educated man of the clumsiness of the imposture. (F.S. Spalding, Joseph Smith Jr., As a Translator,  

1912, p. 27) 

• Dr. A. H. Sayce from Oxford, England: 

It is difficult to deal seriously with Joseph Smith's impudent fraud. The facsimile from the Book of Abraham No. 2 is an ordinary hypocephalus, but the hieroglyphics upon it have been copied so ignorantly that hardly one of them is correct. I need scarcely say that Kolob, &c., are unknown to the Egyptian language. Smith has turned the goddess into a king and Osiris into Abraham. 

• Dr. Flinders Petrie of London University: 

They are copies of Egyptian subjects of which I have seen dozens of examples. They are centuries later than Abraham. The attempts to guess a meaning for them in the professed explanations are too absurd to be noticed. It may be safely said that there is not one single word that is true in these explanations. 

• Dr. James H. Breasted of the Haskell Oriental Museum, University of Chicago: 

It will be seen, then, that if Joseph Smith could read ancient Egyptian writing, his ability to do so had no connection with the decipherment of hieroglyphics by European scholars...The three facsimiles in question represent equipment which will be and has been found in unnumbered thousands of Egyptian graves...The point, then, is that in publishing these facsimiles of Egyptian documents as part of an unique revelation to Abraham, Joseph Smith was attributing to Abraham not three unique documents of which no other copies exist, but was attributing to Abraham a series of documents which were the common property of a whole nation of people who employed them in every human burial, which they prepared... The "problem" is if I accept that the Book of Abraham merely "originated" with the scrolls and is not an actual translation then I also have to try and accept that God and Joseph decided to fool me into believing a true scripture by telling me it was a translation when it was not a translation. I stewed in that "God is an occasional liar for my benefit" paradigm for a few years. Certainly, many LDS folks go through a similar process.  

The ultimate cognitive dissonance here is that either God lies to convince me his scripture is true or  Joseph lies. I decided that Joseph lied, even if the gospel he promoted is "good," even if the Church has a good influence on peoples lives, I was not going to believe in a God that lies to me to bolster his claims; therefore, I conclude that Joseph was a fraud.  

I hope the true believers in the Church understand that folks like me are not against them. I sincerely hope the brethren find a way to navigate this human disaster that maintains many of the positive, unique aspects of LDS culture. They should've started dealing honestly with this issues a hundred years ago. Instead, we received "lying for the lord" for 100 years and now we receive obfuscating for the lord. I suppose I'll call that an improvement, but we deserve better. 

• Robert K. Ritner Phd, Professor of Egyptology University of Chicago and Assistant Professor of Egyptology at Yale University: 

Text of 4 horizontal columns (Smith’s Figs. 12, 13, 14 and 15). The beginning of each line is lost and has been restored wrongly in later editions by the insertion of hieratic text from the Breathing Permit of Hor and the Book of the Dead of Ta-sherit-Min, copied upside down and backwards to the direction of the hypocephalus text. (The Joseph Smith Egyptian Papyri: A Complete Edition.) 

• Dr. Arthur Mace, Assistant Curator of the Metropolitan Museum: 

A Figaro of nonsense.  

• Dr. John Peters of the University of Pennsylvania, who conducted an expedition to Babylonia in 1888: 

The interpretation of the plates displays ignorance. 

• Prof. C. S. A. B. Mercer, custodian of the Hibbard collection of Egyptian reproductions at the Western Theological Seminary: 

None of these, either human or divine, who helped in Joseph Smith's translation had any conception of the most commonplace Egyptian Characters.  

• Dr. Edward Meyer of the University of Berlin and Dr. von Bissing of the University of Munich: 

The papyrus which Joseph Smith declared to be the Book of Abraham and explained in his fantastic way, are parts of the well-known Book of the Dead. 

• Further reading on this subject can be found in: Thompson, Stephen E., and Manuelian Peter. Der. Egypt and Beyond: Essays Presented to Leonard H. Lesko upon His Retirement from the Wilbour Chair of Egyptology at Brown University, June 2005. [Providence, R.I.]: Dept. of Egyptology and Ancient  

Western Asian Studies, Brown University, 2008. Print.