Mormon Response Home
So many of those who want to examine the credentials of Joseph Smith
think that it is simple since we have some of the papyrus that Joseph had
when he translated the Book of Abraham. My belief is that Joseph Smith
found the scrolls interesting and that they contained remnants of the gospel
of Jesus Christ. I believe that the scrolls that Joseph received however
were not written by Abraham. But the genesis of what was on those scrolls
came from material that were indeed written by Abraham. What Joseph "translated"
were those original scrolls. Very similar to the Book of Moses which he
"translated" without access to any document. So the issue becomes not a
matter of testing the translating capability of Joseph using the manuscripts
we have but instead we need to test the text to see if it matches with
what we have learned about Abraham. Information that wasn't available in
Joseph Smith's day.
The best way to expose a forgery is to examine the contents, which
the critics have steadfastly refused to do. Hugh Nibley has given us a
good review of this in: Neglected Evidence for
the Book of Abraham .
The other major attack against Joseph Smith and the Book of Abraham
is directed at a manuscript which came from the Nauvoo period called The
Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar. There was never a claim that the
"Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar" was revelation. We don't even know if it
was written by Joseph. And even it if was it could have been merely his
preliminary work. If so, I would guess that it might be his attempt to
correlate the characters on the papyrus with the original foundation of
those documents.
Comparison of Joseph Smith explanation
of the Facsimilies
Additional information: