Book of Abraham Pt. 1 - Joseph Smith's Translation

hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon stories podcast I am one of your hosts for today John delin it is November 17 2022 and we are here uh in episode 30 of an amazing series on LDS church truth claims with Mike from LDS discussions uh for those of you who don't know there's this amazing website called ldsdiscussions.com where my friend Mike has spent Untold hours uh reviewing And discussing Mormon church truth claims from as neutral and as dispassionate of a perspective as is possible Mike himself is a convert his uh he's in a mixed mixed Faith marriage right now and he is a great guy and he's really super almost almost uh like um just freakishly smart anyway today we're going to be covering the episode lds2sessions.com Abraham Dash translation that's the uh that's the location for the text version of this essay and of course we want to remind everyone that we've assembled all 30 at this point LDS discussions episodes on Spotify in both audio and video format so you can share them with other people or watch them all or listen to them all in sequence uh you can also find them on YouTube under Mormon stories podcast in the LDS discussions playlist and of course it's also available on uh you know Apple podcasting app under LDS discussions or wherever you get your podcasts and of course it's integrated into the Mormon stories podcast feed no discussion of the book of Abraham would be complete without mentioning Dr Robert Ridner here's a photo of Dr Robert Ritner for those of you who are watching but Robert rittner sat in an endowed chair of egyptology at the University of Chicago for multiple decades and one of the honors of my a professional life was uh was doing like a 13-hour series with uh Dr Robert Ritner and the great Radio free Mormon digging into uh the book of Abraham in depth with a real live egyptologist and again the only endowed chair of egyptology in North Central or South America that's who Robert Ritter was Robert Ridner literally passed away in the past year along with Dr Michael Coe a real loss to all of us but just a shout out to Robert rittner and a link to Dr rittner's series with me and rfm can be found at mormasteries.org we'll include a link to that in the show notes and of course that begs the question as we bring on our beloved uh fearless leader Mike Mike why in the world do we even need to include the book of Abraham in this amazing series if we've already got 13 hours of Robert rittner and I don't want you to shy away because I think this is good To Be An important series we do yeah and actually that's a great question because if you've listened to the 13 hours with Dr rittner that you had done there are countless other podcasts that have been done I know rfm has done a bunch on the book of Abraham so there's a lot out there uh I would argue the reason that these are important is because we're trying to cover kind of the truth claims of the Mormon church and we're trying to cover all of them and the book Abraham is the most important way that we can really discern whether or not Joseph Smith had the ability to translate ancient languages and I think what will make these podcasts maybe a little bit different is that we're going to tie them back into what we've already done in the previous episodes to really kind of Drive the point that we've been making this whole series which is that when you look at all these problems in totality these are common threads these problems aren't isolated to the book Abraham Joseph Smith as we know the translation doesn't match the Scrolls well you would sit there and go well that's a one-time thing but as we've talked about in our previous episodes there are a lot of details in the book of Abraham that are going to mirror some of the problems we see with the Book of Mormon um the Doctrine and Covenants put you know DNC 132 as we talked about and so to be able to bring it I think back to our earlier episodes to really drive home the fact that these are not isolated issues um as we'll see as we go through the Apologetics um will be important I think combined with the fact that this is the one area as we'll go through with this presentation that we could show Source material for what Joseph is translating and so um with the Book of Mormon we don't have the ability to do that because obviously the gold plates if they ever existed in the form Joseph said they did we can't look at so um being able to do that and evaluate his claims is very important but obviously if you really want a fuller picture the interviews with Dr rittner the rfm podcast with David Bach boy all of those are great series that you'll want to do in addition to this to get an even deeper view into the book Abraham as a whole we also should mention Dan Vogel has an amazing series um on on YouTube where he also goes into the book of Abraham in depth and Dan Vogel of course is a scholar um of Joseph Smith probably the world's foremost scholar on Joseph Smith and shout out to Dan Vogel we love him and of course my Brent Metcalf episode with Mormon stories also covers a lot of this so lots of different ways and angles that you all can uh get up to speed on book of Abraham really quickly we also want to bring in for today's discussion the one the only the great uh Nema the famous hey Nemo hi John is it okay if I introduce you is is Nemo the famous you don't mind right sure [Laughter] Nemo Nemo is uh obviously he's joining us from the UK and he's got a wonderful Channel on YouTube called Nemo the Mormon and uh he is one of the britvengers which is a group of uh UK YouTubers uh Nemo you really wanted to do book of Abraham is that right yes yes because the uh um the what is it called the in the in the British museum the the code what is it the Rosetta Stone is that because the Rosetta Stone is in the British museum is that why you want to do because all the good old stuffs in the British museum because that's what we do we go around to different parts of the world and we take stuff yeah so all the good stuff's here like any good colonialist that's what you guys do yeah absolutely all right well well Nemo we love your contribution so thanks so much for joining us pleasure all right well um I'm gonna Mike I know you've got several slides introducing all of this but I'm going to go ahead and give a John delin introduction to the book of Abraham for those who have never been Mormon so obviously the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints um believes that the Holy Bible the new in the Old Testament are part of their scriptural Canon so Mormons definitely believe in the Holy Bible and of course we've already covered in depth now uh The Book of Mormon which would be the the Keystone of our religion as we call it Mormons actually view the Book of Mormon as superior to the Bible and I can explain that if anybody wants to disagree with me but there's no doubt that that Joseph Smith called The Book of Mormon the most correct book on Earth and that you'll get closer to Jesus by The Book of Mormon than any other book including the Bible so there's the Bible there's the Book of Mormon and then of course we've covered already on the series uh the Doctrine and Covenants which is a compilation 130 plus Revelations that Joe Joseph Smith received compiled into the doctrine of covenants which we've talked about extensively and then we've talked a little bit about the final two but we did talk about the book of Moses a little bit which which is a one-off for Joseph Smith book of Moses and of course the book of Abraham so the the book of Abraham in the book of Moses combined are called what Mormons called the pearl of great price and I think the Joseph Smith First Vision story is also lumped in there and together those kind of four those four major books are called the quad or they're they're that represents the Mormon Canon and so when we talk about the book of Abraham we're talking about let's just say 25 of Mormon scripture when it comes to actual books so it's hugely important and I'm just going to say that a lot of people come to me and say John to Lynn what was the first thing that really caused you to start questioning the more matures truth claims and it literally was learning The Story You're about to hear today learning this story of the Egyptian Papyrus when I was about 30 or 31 years old after three decades in the church for the first time I learned the real story about the book of Abraham Papyrus and that's what we're going to be uh hearing today so that's my introduction um Mike what would you like to add before we just jump into the slides no nothing I think it's a good thing to mention just because of the fact that as we'll go through the timeline to show how it was published this was canonized this is something that's considered scripture so when we talk about it today it's really hard even though it's not nearly taught to the same degree as the Book of Mormon it still is on the same level within the church as being upheld a scripture from God and I think that's something we need to keep in mind as we go through this too because of the fact that it is something that is supposed to have come through the power of God and there are very testable claims made so as you said this is this is something that if you're not a member of the church you might not understand why this is so important but the fact that it's scripture means that you know it you can't just make it go away I guess is the point I would make it's crucial uh Nema I'm going to bring you into just a second but I'm going to say one last thing um excluding the fact that the book of Commandments as we learned in a previous episode began by saying that Joseph Smith will claim no other gift is that was that the words that were used uh Mike after the Book of Mormon yeah yeah and that first revelation that says basically he'll claim no other gift outside of translating The Book of Mormon and then they change it to I think I forgot what it says like no other gifts until the translation is completed or whatever it is yeah but what but what the Doctrine and Covenants ends up saying about Joseph Smith ultimately well once it's revised is Joseph Smith is referred to as a prophet Seer Revelator and translator and this is really important to understand Joseph Smith the one of the the main way I believe that Joseph Smith obtained his Fame and his power when you study his night let's just say 1820 to 1935. what made him sought out all over New England let's just say was his claim to be able to produce ancient scripture through a magic Seer Stone and the Book of Mormon was his first production we've already talked about how he produced The Book of Mormon by looking at a peep Stone in a hat and claiming to translate ancient records but once he's described as a prophet Seer Revelator and translator of course that leads to the expectation kind of of what have you done for me lately so the book of Abraham becomes very important because as Joseph Smith needs to keep people following him and believing in him he's got to live up to the title that he gives himself which is to continue seeing with his Seer Stone as a Seer and translated because that's what the Doctrine and Covenants or that's what the Revelation said so the book of Abraham along with the book of Moses and ultimately you know DNC and even the Kinderhook plates all become uh instances of Joseph Smith trying to live up to his calling as a translator because that was his special gift Nemo anything else you want to add before we jump into the beginning of the slides yeah I mean not to take it on a tangent so it's just a statement but it surprises me that if you look at community of Christ's copy of Doctrine and Covenants it's full of sections there's so many more than there are in the brighamite sect um because they can they they practice what they preach when it comes to an open Canon of scripture they actually canonize stuff they write it down I find it fascinating that after Joseph Smith barely anyone contributes to canonized in the quad LDS scripture um which just goes to show how special Joseph is perceived to be in his ability to translate and bring forth scripture that will be written down in this way absolutely most most Latter-Day Saints are members of the Mormon Church don't even know that Brigham Young didn't like the term prophet he preferred president and it wasn't as I understand it until David O McKay that the presidents of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints started allowing themselves to be called Prophet again that's how special they all viewed in my understanding uh Joseph Smith so all right Mike so let's go ahead now that we've got that introduction up should we jump to our first slide yeah so we're just gonna the first slide is just really quickly for anyone watching or listening just to give you kind of a preview of how we're going to break this up um we're gonna do the same thing we do with polygamy which is to kind of do a mini series on the book of Abraham uh just because we want to make sure we give enough time to both the critical side of the arguments and the apologetic side um regarding the book Abraham Joseph Smith and and so today we're going to focus mostly on the translation process um so we're going to look at what Joseph Smith claimed the scroll said against what we now know they actually say uh and then our next episode is going to basically be the almost the apologetic response to this episode so the next episode is going to be looking at the apologetic responses if you've ever paid any attention to this uh subject before you're going to be familiar with like the long and lost scroll Theory the Catalyst Theory um and so we're going to focus on kind of those and what the evidence evidence in history says about those and then we're gonna have a third episode which could possibly be broken into two depending on how long it goes because one of the things um John was saying how this was one of the first um hits to his uh Faith uh one of the things to me is um when I first started learning about the book Abraham everyone is focused on the translation and for good reason as we'll cover today but uh it was an episode that John had done with David bakavoy and um David bakavoy had he's a religious Professor he's you know got a doctorate he's a scholar of of all things Bible he knows what he's talking about and he spent um I think about like 15 or 20 minutes in one of the episodes explaining why you can look at the book of Abraham text and without even looking at the translation process or the Scrolls or any of that you could show that it is not an ancient text and so I wanted to do an episode that focuses on the book of Abraham in the same way we did with the Book of Mormon which is to say what does the text show us with regard to biblical scholarship as to its credibility as an ancient text and so the third episode is going to be looking at just the text of it and then on the flip side of that we're going to look at the apologetic talks about um the what they what apologists will claim will be hits by Joseph Smith so um there is a famous one which is uh olishim and we'll talk about all that stuff in the third or fourth episode depending on how long it goes so that is just basically an overview of how we're going to proceed so if anyone's watching today and they're thinking you're not covering the Apologetics it's just because we want to make sure we put these in kind of uh episode chunks that aren't going to be so long that people are going to zone out we want to do it and and or we won't zone out do it and kind of concise episodes um so that we stay on track and give enough time to everything yeah and I'll just I'll just back up your your you know statement that we need multiple episodes for this if there were one single topic you know for somebody who's really just trying to know is this church true was Joseph Smith a prophet did he really have the power to do what he said he had to do you know the way he set up the Book of Mormon with Golden Plates to get taken away with a language that he called reformed Egyptian that you know none of us no one's able to discover what that really means someone could say that the Book of Mormon is sort of completely undisproveable if you wanted one single issue of all the issues that would allow you to really fairly and scientifically determine whether Joseph Smith had the powers he claimed he had it is the book of Abraham because you can see the source text we have the source text we have the ability to read Egyptian and we have expert egyptologists that have translated the original Source text or the papyra and they've told us what's on them and so there's just no way it's one issue it's it's such a crucial issue Nemo anything you want to add before we jump on just that you called it reformed you talked about the reformed Egyptian uh I'd love to explore or just put forward the idea that maybe because then a genuine bit of Egyptian kind of artifact came into his possession or came into his vicinity he would have felt pressure then to translate it because he's made claims previously about being able to translate reformed Egyptian and it's not a far swing for people absolutely okay so this is a crucial issue all right so Mike let's go to the next slide uh yes a quick introduction to the book of Abraham purchase the history behind the book yeah and so this is going to take it directly from the church's gospel topics essay on the book of Abraham and they kind of describe how Joseph Smith came to possess these Scrolls and so they say in the summer of 1835 an entrepreneur named Michael Chandler arrived at Church headquarters in Kirtland Ohio with four mummies and multiple Scrolls of Papyrus Chandler found a ready Audience by the time the collection arrived in Kirtland all but four mummies and several Papyrus girls had already been sold a group of Latter-day Saints in Kirtland purchased the remaining artifacts for the church after Joseph Smith examined the papyri and commenced the translation of some of the characters or hieroglyphics his history of crowns recounts much to our joy we found that one of the roles contained the writings of Abraham I would also note that the Joseph Smith says that one of the roles contains the writings of Joseph I don't think the essay puts it in there because obviously that draws more attention to I think Joseph's claims um but uh the church paid twenty four hundred dollars for the for those uh mummies and Scrolls which is about 68 000 in today's money um and if you've studied church history The Church did not have a lot of money at that point so this was obviously a massive purchase um and and you know basically Joseph Smith conducts this very brief inspection of the rules and says I commence a translation and I'm highlighting that word on on the screen because of the fact that as we've talked about that word means a lot and um so he says of some of the characters are hieroglyphics and much shorter Joy uh found that one of the roles contained the writing of Abraham another the writings of Joseph of Egypt Egypt Etc a more full account of which will appear in its place as I proceed to examine or unfold them truly we can say the Lord is beginning to reveal the abundance of peace and Truth okay and if it's okay if I give a tiny bit of background just to add to this what you have to understand if you want to understand Joseph Smith is that he grew up reading the Bible and loving the Bible and he particularly really paid a lot of attention to the Old Testament we've already talked about how polygamy came out of Joseph Smith at least in part asking God wait Abraham Isaac Jacob you know Israel or Jacob Israel also Solomon and David they all had plural wives hey God why do they get plural wives and I don't you know that's basically but also um when Joseph was reading the Bible he would have been very familiar with the fact that Abraham father Abraham who you could say is the father of of you know the Israelite people basically Abraham and his family um migrated to Egypt in the Old Testament because of famine so Joseph would have read these stories I think it's Genesis 12 11-20 he would have read that Father Abraham spent time in Egypt and so when when Michael Chandler comes into Kirtland Ohio with these mummies and Papyrus immediately in Joseph's mind it would have been woe Abraham and Moses they hung out in Egypt and he automatically would have been thinking Abraham and so that's why Joseph is excited to buy the mummies and he's excited to get the papyrus because in his mind he Associates Egyptian with with the Old Testament and with Abraham does that sound does that sound fair Mike I think that's an important foundation to lay yeah I think um just from listening to other people have talked about this it's like one of those things where there weren't a lot of other people Joseph could have Associated the scrolls with other than Abraham and Joseph at that point so um it fits into Joseph Kelly Nemo said it's like you know one of the things that's funny about it is you know the essay talks about how Michael Chandler found a ready audience speak a ready audience and it's because Michael Chandler's got these Scrolls they're mysterious right because the um whole idea of like Egyptian artifacts is fascinating to basically the whole world's at this point and so everyone is fascinated by trying to decipher the language trying to understand what they're all about and then all of a sudden you get near Kirtland uh and there's all these people who are like oh we've got a prophet who already translated you know reformed Egyptian and as Nemo said all of a sudden you bring it to Joseph and Joseph's like uh yeah I could do it of course I could do it and uh maybe that sounds facetious but as Nemo said it it puts a lot of pressure on Joseph because if he says he can't do it everyone in the church is going to be like why can't you do it and so Joseph immediately is going to try to find what he can connect knowing it's Egyptian to the Bible and that makes a lot of sense that he would immediately jump to Abraham and Joseph and Nema I'm going to bring you in I'm just going to say one last thing probably one other really important historical element that sets the context for the book of Abraham is the fact that Napoleon who was I don't know the emperor of France he conquered Egypt in July of 1798. so you know we're talking 30 you know 33 35 years uh um I say 37 years after Michael Chandler strolls into Kirtland and so from that point you know the this this phenomenon called egyptomania I believe it was called started sweeping the world because all these mummies and and pyramids and artifacts and Scrolls were now available to the world but we but we hadn't sort of cracked the the um Egyptian hieroglyphics code yet I believe that before Joseph Smith got the um got the papyra the Rosetta Stone had been discovered and maybe it had been translated but it wasn't broadly known yet that it had been and nobody I can tell you nobody in Upper New England thought that anyone had had translated figured out how to crack the hieroglyphic code but there was a huge Global Fascination called egyptomania and so again that's why Michael Chandler was touring through New England showing these mummies showing these Scrolls because people would put down a lot of money because they were fascinated with all things Egyptian Nemo any other historical tidbit as a Brit that you want to add I mean yeah Thomas Young a Brit and a Frenchman uh just looking up his name Jean Francois Jean Paul Young I think his name was they were the two guys that cracked the Rosetta Stone um and that was kind of 1822 as they started publishing what was on it so you've got like 20 30 years before that makes its way into kind of mainstream American knowledge or even kind of American Academia I guess so you know this is really still quite early on and you know Howard is is not I don't think he's discovered Tutankhamun at this point it's all you know because the thing to remember is this is all buried right the Egyptians buried all this in pyramids this is all funerary stuff this was all designed to be sealed away these Spirits have been whisked off to the afterlife surrounded by their gold and all their treasures and all the things the Egyptians thought would bring them forward um they were all kept out of view of the world and so when this stuff starts getting Unearthed thousands of years later yeah it's it's taking everyone's imaginations by storm and people had all sorts of theories for what hieroglyphics meant and the only re I don't know how much we're going to cover the Rosetta Stone but it's only because it contained Greek that people already understood that you could then start to compare the languages yeah and Mike I'll bring you back in but obviously if Joseph Smith claims have the power of translation that only works if he's translating languages that nobody else knows so it's crucial to realize that Joseph Smith thought that nobody could read Egyptian and so he would see that as an opportunity to make people think he could or maybe in mind he thought he was actually translating Egyptian that that's what modern Mormon believing apologists would say either way it was crucial that that in Joseph's mind nobody else in the world could read these hieroglyphics or make sense of them that's why that's another reason why he was so excited did no one can prove him wrong yeah he accidentally could prove him wrong well yeah and that was one of those eye-opening moments for me when I was starting to do the Deep dive into all of this and I always thought it was weird that Jerusalem came to the Americas and then ended up writing in reformed Egyptians it's like why would you write an Egyptian when he left a system that you know wrote you know Hebrew language and someone I forgot who was I was listening to podcaster like yeah the reason the Book of Mormon gold plates were not claimed to be written in Hebrews because Joseph Smith would have no claim to be a prophet because you could just take it to a scholar who could translate Hebrew and at the time into English um and so the reason that reformed Egyptian and I'm looking at this from the from the perspective of course that the gold plates were not what Joseph claimed them to be um the reason Joseph would have chosen uh not just Egyptian but reformed Egyptian is to make sure there's absolutely no way that there would be anybody who could walk in and say oh I can do that without any need for God and so um that fits into the the book Abraham in the sense of this is the one language Joseph Smith felt confident um nobody else could could fact check him on because at that point no one knew how no one knew what the word said and so in his mind you could say whatever you wanted to because who is going to tell you you're wrong because he doesn't understand that this Rosetta Stone is going to completely change the game and it's already happening as he's translating but not in as you said not in his neck of the woods okay so Michael Chandler brings these mummies and papyrus in papyri into Kirtland Joseph lays down 2 400 bucks or 68 000 in today's um US Dollars purchases these um these artifacts and almost immediately says oh they're the writings of Abraham probably even before really looking at him is that right yeah I mean what and it's one of those things it's another one of those things where you look at you're like what a coincidence you know and um and obviously we'll get into all of that as we do these episodes but yeah it's just ever this I talked with Nemo a little bit before we started in in you as well but how this is one of those episodes where on some level you're like this is such a simple thing and yet we have to go through all this because we have to um acknowledge what the church is presenting as far as making this plausible but yeah it's one of those things where you go what are the odds that the last few Scrolls in the last few mummies just happened to be the writings of Abraham that just happened to make it to Kirtland that Joseph Smith just happened to buy and you know but again we don't need to think about quinces because we can look at the source material absolutely all right so the next slide is Joseph Smith translates and releases the book of Abraham yeah and so this is just kind of like so they purchased the Scrolls and um in that same year which is 1835 um Joseph begins translating the book of Abraham papyri um according to his scribe W Phelps he says um he's writing in Joe you know in the first person somebody says I mean Joseph was continually engaged in translating an alphabet of the book of Abraham in arranging a grammar of the Egyptian language and while there's not a universal agreement on when the book Abraham was was actually translated um Dan Vogel who who John mentioned earlier who does an absolutely amazing job with this um he points to a lot of evidence in the text itself and in the journals um which shows that book of Abraham chapter 1 through chapter 2 verse 18 uh was done in 1835 but the remainder of the book Abraham was not produced um until they got to Nauvoo likely all of it in 1842 parley Pratt said in 1842 that the pearl of great price is now in course of translation by means of the yearmantham and proves to be a record written partly by the father of the faithful Abraham and finished by Joseph when in Egypt which kind of works off of the um claim we talked about in the last slide which is that um he claims it's both Abraham and Joseph who are on the Scrolls and then if you go back let's see oh yeah and then um they're gonna release the book of Abraham uh they're gonna serially publish it in the times and Seasons so it's going to be published like bit by bit and they start that on March 1st 1842 uh it finishes up in May and the heading of the book of Abraham uh was written as follows a translation again emphasis added of some ancient records that have fallen into our hands from the catacombs of Egypt purporting to be the writings of Abraham while he was in Egypt called The Book of Abraham written by his own hand upon papyrus so that kind of leaves no it's very unambiguous Joseph's saying that literally that that Abraham got ink or whatever was used and on these actual pieces of paper Father Abraham wrote the hieroglyphics his story and that's what the Papyrus were it's it's unambiguous right Nemo yeah absolutely yeah yeah yeah all right all right Mike so that's what they claimed from the start yes okay I mean they make it very clear so it's like one of those things every time Nemo it's like somebody's with these slides it's like yeah that's what he said so we'll leave it at that as we go through these slides oh now this is something that um you know believing Mormons aren't going to really pay much attention to but it's probably worth noting that most Jewish Scholars and remember Jewish Scholars see the Old Testament of scripture they will say there's no real evidence that an Abraham ever existed because unlike let's just say some of the you know New Testament um Scrolls or writings that we have uh you know that at least there's some Source documents to it there's no Source documents uh that really provide any evidence that that um Adam and Eve or Abraham Isaac or Jacob ever existed once you start getting into David and Solomon then the Jews will will basically say that there's writings that maybe you can start associating with actual historical figures but I would say most secular Jewish Scholars or Scholars of ancient religions will say that it's more likely than not that just like we've already established that there was no Abraham there was no Adam and Eve there's no evidence that there was ever an Abraham Isaac or Jacob that doesn't mean they didn't exist just that there's no evidence that they did do either of you have anything uh to say about that uh I would just add um so there is a he's a translation supervisor for the church uh named Dan McClellan and he does really really cool work um you can follow him on Tick Tock he's on Twitter uh he had done a video and I don't mean to throw him I'm not gonna throw him under the bus I don't mean to pull him into this I guess I should say but he had done a video uh I think it was last year maybe maybe even this year and he basically said look the the Moses and Abraham were unlikely historical figures but if they were historical they're likely nothing like they are in the Bible because all of those things would have happened so far before they were written down and so um to your point from a historical standpoint there's probably no historical Abraham but even if there was some Abraham that these stories are written after uh it would have been through hundreds and hundreds of years of being retold and changed uh by different communities so the Abraham in the Bible wouldn't be nothing like a historical Abraham if there was a historical Abraham this is written after so yes to and that is someone that works with the church who is also a Bible scholar who does a very good job I know he definitely has um rubbed some people the wrong way because he obviously does take sometimes a somewhat of a faith promoting um aspect but yeah it's um yeah he's likely not a historical figure Nemo is there anything you want to add to that I just yeah just to say that Abraham is such a um such an important figure to they took what the abrahamic faith so Christianity Islam Judaism they all involve Abraham in some way and so he's he's many people to many people um and so he's mythologized to the nth degree and so like like Mike said even if he was real he's not the mythologized man that's presented I think you know we talk about how the book of Abraham the topic can be so complex but it's also so simple is my memory from Dr Robert Ritter is they've actually they can date these Scrolls these Scrolls that Michael Chandler gave Joseph Smith they can date when they were I've got the dates if you want to slightly written down and that in and of itself should should kind of make it really clear that these Papyrus aren't what they claim Nemo what are the davises the church admits it on their essay so I'm looking at the church's essay now and it says these fragments States between the third Century BCE and the first century CE long after Abraham lived yeah yeah the church even admits it so right off the bat how in the world so so Abraham would have lived how many years before Jesus was it was it good thousand at least at least a thousand years is that right Mike yeah I think it's at least a thousand yeah let's buy more than that but it's at least a thousand and I think the Papyrus dating which the church accepts I think is a thousand years after Abraham's I mean just the timing of it you're just no there's nowhere to to make this mesh together yeah it would be it would be like a document that we could we could demonstrate was was a thousand years old um you know sorry a document that we could demonstrate came from the Civil War era like we could look at the paper we could look at the ink we could look at what's written on it we know it comes uh from from the you know the 1860s in the United States then someone claiming that it that it that it um you know talked about Muhammad in 800 A.D like the date of the document alone uh makes that case okay so um so let's go to the next slide which is the grammar and alphabet of the Egyptian language yeah and so we just mentioned the last slide how Joseph talks about in the journal about how he's putting together this grammar and alphabet and this is kind of known as the Gael and I've also people say that the Kirtland Egyptian papers so after he purchases the fragment he's beginning to translate the characters um both in the book Abraham but also in what is now known as the grammar and alphabet of the English sorry grammar alphabet of the Egyptian language and you know it's one of those things this is going to be important as we do um the next episode as well so just remember uh the the grammar and Alpha the Egyptian language because Joseph Smith is going to make all these translations as to what these symbols mean and they're all wrong so this is another area where we could show that Joseph Smith is claiming these characters say one thing and now obviously now now we know it's just completely wrong you look at the size of the source material who's working with the amount of characters he had to work with in order to manufacture the entire book of Abraham he was having to and did ascribe entire paragraphs of meaning to a single symbol which is not how hieroglyphics work yeah and we're gonna well I'm sure we're gonna go into that in depth I'll just say this that this document is so important because it really is it's showing how Joseph Smith um his thought processes and the actual text that that show the Fingerprints of how he translated Papyrus and the one thing that I'll just say is that this grammar in Egyptian this grammar and alphabet of the Egyptian language has been in the church's possession for a long long time at least 50 to 100 years if not for 150 years or more and what people do need to know about this document is that it was hid from the church membership intentionally until it it was kind of uncovered you know by Sandra Tanner and many people working with Sandra and Gerald Tanner all of this is um chronicled in the book Lighthouse by Gerald and Sandra Tanner um I I've been reading this for an episode we're doing um with with Sandra soon but in chapter nine it gives kind of an overview but it's really important to understand that this document not only is essential it's something that was hid from the church members until the 1960s and it does show the sincerity of Joseph's either belief or attempt to genuinely translate this because we'll go into it in the next episode but all sorts of things are going to be said about what the word translate really means but this shows that Joseph was trying to take the symbols he saw and give them meaning yep right okay Mike anything else you want to say about the Gale no just just to everybody watching or listening to just keep this in the back your head because this actually is very important especially in the next episode when we get into apologetics because this is something that is going to be uh controversial as far as when this was done and who did it and we'll get into all that later but just kind of keep in mind that Joseph was doing this at the same time as he began the book of Abraham translation so his first the first chapter plus was being done at the same time or this might have been done right after I'm not sure the exact timing but this is being done in between or something let me put it this way it's being done before the bulk of the book Abraham has written and that's very important to note okay all right so the next slide is a brief book of Abraham timeline book translation timeline this is essential to understand the timeline yeah and so we've we've talked about the timeline in so many of these episodes whether it's First Vision or the book Abraham translation and polygamy um but basically to to just give you a real brief overview obviously as we talked about in the summer of 1835 um Joseph is going to purchase these Egyptian Scrolls for twenty four hundred dollars um that summer and fall he's going to be begin the translation of the book of Abraham and that is going to be Abraham chapter 1 through chapter 2 verse 18. around the same time they're working on the Kirtland Egyptian papers which as we talked about is also known as the Gale kale I don't know how they grammar you know grammar Alpha the Egyptian language um and then this is going to kind of go on hold and then in 1842 Joseph Smith is going to pick this project back up and finish the translation of the book of Abraham and as I mentioned this is an area we're going to talk about a ton when we get to the Apologetics but we have in Joseph's own journal we're in 1842 he's saying commence translating from the book of Abraham for the for 10 uh number the number 10 issue of the times and season and so as we just mentioned this was really important because the church's apologists want the entire book of Abraham written in 1835 so that the grammar and alphabet of the Egyptian language could be considered a project by the scribes to effectively reverse engineer what Joseph Smith was doing when matching up the characters because of the fact that the grammar and outfit of the Egyptian language is is 100 incorrect yeah Nemo you want to add something yeah I mean it's really difficult not to get into the apology apologetics of it but since you mentioned the apologist there I think it's really interesting I talk a lot about apologists live in kind of a fantasy land they try and present a version of the church that works for them uh and that they think should work for you too but it doesn't always represent what the church actually is this is an example of that because the church in its essay which I have in front of me again the church in its essay admits that the first few chapters were done he says uh the first chapter and part of the second chapter were complete by the summer of fall at 1835. his journal next speaks of translating the papyri in the spring of 1842 after the Saints are relocated to Nauvoo Illinois so the church admits that it didn't all take place in 1835. so the apologists are trying to make an argument that the church concedes and they do that all the time it's it's crazy well complicated about this is that there's not one group of apologists with them exactly right there's the Hugh nibbly um John G Kerry molstein uh Daniel Peterson branch of sort of old school classic Mormon apologists that need everything scientifically uh you know linguistically they need it all to make sense they need Joseph Smith to have known what he was doing and to have been in fact a literal translator and so they're the ones that are basically trying to say no no the Gale was not you know the the notes that Joseph took or the means or the mechanics by which he was translating the book of Abraham the Gale was just Joseph playing around trying to figure out you know Egyptian so that then he could um you know he then he could do the actual translation because because the Gale is kind of The Smoking Gun that shows that Joseph Smith didn't know what he was doing and so that's why classic Mormon apologists need to discredit it modern Mormon apologists kind of the neopologists they have a different explanation we're going to talk about that next episode do I have that right Mike did I get that right yeah and and when it comes to this particular one I think one of the arguments you'll hear about what Nemo said and we just mentioned in 1842 Joseph is repeatedly talking about translating the book of Abraham and what you'll hear from some of the key um Egyptian apologists for the church as that translate actually means revise uh and we'll get into that next episode but that that follows up it falls apart when you read the I think there's one journal entry where it actually says we've engaged in translating and revising so it's like Well it can't be you know be like that'd be like me saying I was cleaning and cleaning it's like well that's you know so yeah it it falls apart yeah we'll get that next episode okay so the next slide is problems with the book of Abraham translation yeah and so we're going to get into this pretty quick as far as just why this is such a problem for the church and so the book Abraham was released in 1842 and at the time nobody around Joseph Smith knew how to translate Egyptian which is what made Joseph Smith's uh translation so momentous in the church and this is gonna all happen while the Rosetta Stone is being cracked and so as Nemo said earlier they discovered it in 1799 uh it took a couple decades to be deciphered but news of its existence was not known at least broadly in America until around 1858 that's the first time that's uh it was at the University of Pennsylvania I believe they actually made an English translation of the Rosetta Stone translations they translated into English I don't know if I was in French at first or what but um and this is obviously after Joseph Smith uh is killed and this discovery allows Scholars to decipher ancient Egyptian writings for the first time and this knowledge is going to lead Egyptian Scholars to conclude that the book of Abraham facsimiles and papyri have absolutely nothing to do with Abraham or the version of the book of Abraham that Joseph Smith presents as a translation from God just just to explain to people what's on the rosette system if you can pull up that image um there are three there's three types of writing on there there's hieroglyphics then there's demotic and then there's Greek so uh demotic is kind of like a cursive form of hieroglyphics it's like more similar to a sort of hand handwriting type form and then you've got the Greek and because people knew how to read uh ancient Greek they were then able to compare certain uh repeating phrases and frequency of repetition and work out all that word is then that and then they start to build a picture that's how they do it but what's really fascinating about this is for a long time it was thought thought that what you're seeing there is a Greek text that is you know being written because of what's been written in the Egyptian but actually it's the other way around the Egyptian is a translation of the Greek text which uh it's just a little fun fact for you and basically this would have been produced um around I guess 196 BC the Rosetta Stone would have been produced what is a way to help people translate between the three languages is that why it would have been originally created I don't I don't yeah I'm assuming so I mean it would make sense why else would they put the same text written three different ways with three different languages on the same Stone this is where I need my best friend who's studying Classics at University because he knows this stuff but um I believe there was It was obviously um there was interesting the Greek civilizations gone actually I found it you got it you got it is thus one of many mass-produced delay s-t-e-l-a-e designed to widely disseminate an agreement issued by a council of priests in 196 BC okay so they wanted to communicate an agreement but they wanted to do it in three languages and so by disseminating the same text in three languages um they were able to communicate with multiple with multiple people who could read in multiple languages because the Greeks and the Egyptians interacted so any Greeks involved can also understand yeah that's what it was all right it wasn't created as a translation Aid no it was it was a message that needed to get out in three different languages white people who knew all three languages right yep okay all right Mike Rosetta Stone okay yeah does that make sense yeah and so this obviously creates massive problems and so yeah and so what the church admits in its gospel topics essay which we'll cover later and I'm repeating what you just said Mike is that is that that the church admits that once you once you have a knowledge of Egyptian based on the Rosetta Stone you read through the Papyrus and the word Abraham doesn't appear anywhere on any of the Papyrus and nothing that's written on the Papyrus has anything to do with Abraham and that makes perfect sense because the Papyrus themselves date to A Thousand Years After Abraham would have even lived if he was a if he was an actual historical figure at all correct that's it we can go down yeah is it that isn't it really that simple like we could end the book of Abraham discussion right now yeah I mean it is that's why this is on some level it just feels like you know to quote Zoolander I feel like I'm taking crazy pills because you're going through this and you're like you know we'll go through it as we do this episode but yeah there's just all these arguments are being made and you're like but he got it wrong like why are we still doing this and yet we're gonna spend six hours so you know yeah okay all right so the next slide is that egyptologists knew as early as 18 1856 that Joseph got it wrong so you're you're telling me that egyptologists you know were able to kind of look at the documents Joseph Smith produced either in scripture or in the times of Seasons or the Publications and they were already starting to say Joseph got it wrong as early as age 1856. yeah I mean yeah and that's why it's so crazy so um the discovery of the Rosetta Stone led many early egyptologists to note that the book Abraham was not a true translation along with the advancement in knowledge about the common funerary texts uh Scrolls that the book Abraham was actually produced from and so this is kind of not really um has nothing to do with the Rosetta Stone but as early as 1856 an egyptologist named Gustav I think it's scifarth I'm not sure if I'm doing that right but he looked at the rules and he said the following the Papyrus role is not a record but an invocation to the deity Osiris in which occurs the name of the person and a picture of the attendant Spirits introducing the dead to the judge Osiris and so that's from Robert rittner's book about the the Egyptian papyri and so it's not so much that they could translate the language in 1856 but they could look at that and know this is not some sort of a record of anyone this is literally a funerary text which is what the Church of course now admits and so um egyptologists were able to look at the facsimiles and know immediately that there were funeral documents with no connection to Abraham um Theodore devaria an egyptologist at the Louvre Museum put it bluntly when he said the fact similes were common Egyptian funerary documents of which he had examined hundreds and so it's kind of like you know if you went up to um you know someone who was familiar with different currencies in the world and you gave them a coin and they could look at that and go oh that's an ancient Roman coin because they've seen so many this is nothing unique to someone who studies this stuff and that's what makes you know Joseph Smith turning this into a one-of-a-kind document so egregious because they can look at this immediately without even looking at the text to go I know what this is this is not what what it's being claimed to be yeah it'd be like if if they found a dreidel from a thousand BC they would go oh that's a little top that you spin as part of a Hanukkah game slash ritual you wouldn't call it a weapon you wouldn't call it a bullet you would call it a dreidel and you know if we if we take it that if we take the dates that we know the Papyrus sort of date to and we look at the context that they were found in which is in burying mummies right burying you know leaders Egyptian leaders what would we expect to be on the Papyrus not even having the ability to read Egyptian it would be they were they would be funerary texts they would be funeral related documents that talk about the person who's being buried the talk about his burial or even the afterlife and some sort of religious sense that's what we would expect the documents to be and that's in fact what egyptologists who have read the documents say that they are and that's why they don't have the word Abraham there it would be weird to have Scrolls buried with a mummy a dead person that wasn't Abraham you know dated a thousand years after Abraham would have lived it would be weird for those Papyrus buried with that dead Egyptian leader to be talking about Abraham versus talking about the dead person who's buried with the Scrolls in Nema what would you add yeah I would just just say you know the hypocephalus for example that round facsimile it's found under the head of the Mummy that's where it lives so anyone that finds it in context anyone that knows where that ought to be knows exactly what it's for it's like me getting I've got a U.S quarter here right yeah a little bit of money and if someone doesn't know what that is then they could try and tell me it's all sorts of things but you guys being Americans you look at that and you instantly know what it is yeah yeah and that's what Hebrew apologists uh no can do yeah yeah well yeah it's like um there was a show here I think they still do it but it's called Antiques Roadshow I don't know if Nemo's ever heard that if they do a version of that in the UK but absolutely yeah so this show will they'll have like this this nice old lady and she'll come up and she'll be like my great-grandmother has passed his down from generation to generation and she actually told us that General George Washington used this in the Revolutionary War um they only made 12 of them they gave it to the best generals and the dude who's like a specialist on the show is like yeah no this is actually a um you know a cane that was made in mass production in 1913 by XYZ company because that's their specialty they know what these things are so this is the exact same thing where you know Joseph Smith if he were alive today would go to the Antiques Roadshow and he goes I have the writings of Abraham and Joseph and the egyptologists be like no this is like literally a very common funerary scroll with no connection whatsoever I mean it's it's that black and white this is not you know there's no middle ground here I'd love to see Joseph Smith on Antiques Roadshow that would be amazing there should be a skit for that actually that'd be kind of fun but yeah it needs to be like a post-mormon version of Saturday Night Live that does Skip yeah apparently yeah really really quickly when you talk about Gustav safearth egyptologists declaring what what was in the translation tell me if I'm if I'm right about this what he would have seen would not have been the actual scroll he would have seen the facsimiles that were produced what in the times and Seasons so here's facsimile one here's facsimile two um and and most of us as Mormons would have seen the facsimiles and that's what he that's all he really needed to talk about what would have been um on the Papyrus because the Papyrus themselves the text or the the writings of the Papyrus were not made publicly available is that right Mike well they were publicly made available and they actually charged people to see them I mean written in a newspaper published it in newspaper is that right no I don't think they ever were so I mean again I don't know if it's possible that that this guy was in America and they they he came to to look at them or if he like you said just looked at what was printed in the book like in the facsimiles in in the book of Abraham I'm not sure but I do know that the Smith family held on to him uh after Brigham Young went to Utah I don't know exactly when they sold them uh and they did charge people and they would show them these Scrolls uh to look at so anyone who had I think they charged a quarter or something could go in there and look at the Scrolls they would bring them out for him so you know I'm not sure if he saw him in person or just the facts Emily's okay all right so let's go ahead and go to kind of the second death blow to book of Abraham authenticity and this is something that I talked a lot about in the in the Shannon Caldwell Montez secret Mormon meetings of 1922 episode we've got this amazing New York Times article because the church obviously Joseph Smith is killed in 1844. um you know you we didn't mention this in the previous slide but the church moves to uh Utah Brigham Young takes the Utah Saints to Utah and and what many people don't know is that those Papyrus were thought um as you wrote on this slide to have been lost in the Chicago Fire and all we really had were the facsimiles to go on and so everyone had thought uh you know by the early 1900s that the Papyrus had been lost but egyptologists could opine on the facsimiles and that's exactly what they did in 1912 right yeah exactly talk us through that yeah and so this one was one of the ones that blew my mind too because this is from December 29th 1912 and it's a New York Times headline that proclaims Museum Wallace Proclaim fraud of Mormon profit and the article is literally uh the New York Times going to a bunch of egyptologists and having them compare uh the work on the facsimiles to the hundreds of similar similar documents that museums have already studied and translated at this point and as we mentioned this is all while the world still believes that the source material was lost in the Chicago Fire and this tells you that Nemo has said it I think you said it too you don't even need to see the remaining fragments because of the fact that they printed the facsimiles directly in so we know what the facsimiles were and in 1912 the church in the world knew that Joseph Smith got it completely wrong yeah and for the historical context there like in the United States everyone was kind of upset about polygamy the Mormon church had promised to stop practicing polygamy by nine by 1890 it kept secretly practicing polygamy until like the early 1900s there were these Smoot hearings where the you know Utah was wanting to be a state but it but it was secretly lying to the world and so there are these hearings where the Mormon church is on trial and Mormons are viewed with kind of Suspicion and disgust and so it would have been that context where probably journalists from The New York Times would have said would have been motivated to go hey all of this trouble that's going on with polygamy in Utah and and the Church of Jesus Christ latter Saints like it's based on Joseph Smith and and his credibility as a leader so it's fair game to to sort of explore it wasn't sort of just base hatred of Mormons or like quote anti-mormon sentiment it's just like wow the Mormon church is causing all this stress should we even use modern egyptologists to kind of determine whether Joseph Smith was even a credible guy and it was in that context that these credible egyptologists just literally studied the facsimiles translated them and again agreed with with the previous scholar that these facsimiles were funerary um you know were part of funerary texts buried with a mummy and literally the word Abraham didn't appear anywhere on them Nemo just just treat it like any other language for a second right take take any piece of writing in any language take a piece of writing in German if I say that means this I I believe this says X Y and Z and I've put that in my religious documents and I'm making claims about that it is fair game for anyone with an expertise in that language to come along and check whether I'm telling the truth it's really that simple yeah yeah there's no motivational hatred behind it it's just experts in the field of whatever language are going to want to know the things that are being said about that are true or not and we as believing Mormons are always primed to discredit and disbelieve and dismiss anything anyone says that would make us doubt the church as sort of anti-mormon opposition but but if but if you know early 20th century Scholars like you say of German or French or Italian or Greek if they were opining about any other document Mormon believing Mormons would just probably just accept that those Scholars know what they're talking about and it probably should be the same thing with Egyptian it should all right Mike so anything else you want to say about this slide no I think you guys covered it well all right so the next slide is the Papyrus fragments are found but have nothing to do with Abraham so tell us about that yeah and so this really just makes you know compounds the problem for Joseph Smith and the truth claims of the church because they ReDiscover these fragments that they thought were lost in the Chicago Fire in the 1966 they're found they get the New York Metropolitan Museum and they give them back to the church for an anonymous donation and it includes uh Papyrus fragments that include facsimile one uh with the surrounding symbols that are going to match like perfectly with the book Abraham manuscripts and so this tells us that the source material for the book of Abraham is now extant and we can kind of evaluate it and the church's gospel topics essay concedes as much they say none of the characters on the Papyrus fragments mentioned Abraham's name or any of the events recorded in the book of Abraham Mormon and non-mormon egyptologists agree that the characters on the fragments do not match the translation given in the book of Abraham though there is not unanimity even among non-mormon Scholars about the proper interpretation of the vignettes on these fragments Scholars have identified yeah I know the scholars have identified the Papyrus fragments as part of a standard funerary text that were deposited with mummified bodies and then this one's the big one the the other big one these fragments date to between the third Century BCE and the first century CE long after Abraham lived and so as we said those two sentences the beginning and end of that paragraph should put an end to any discussion about the book of Abraham being an ancient authentic text Nemo we heard you kind of gasped in something can you tell us what you were guessing about dying at the Weasley way that they try and Claw back this they they try and Claw back some credibility by casting doubt it's like I'm holding up this quarter again and everyone's going like Joseph Smith said this was a penny both Mormon and non-mormon Scholars agree this is not a penny there's not unanimity as to whether it's a dime or a quarter fine but it's definitely not a penny and that's what Joseph Smith was saying it was it's definitely not what he was saying it was it doesn't matter whether everyone agrees on exactly what it therefore is it's just it's about what it isn't that's what's important and I just hate the Weasley way that they try and cast doubt on the Integrity or the knowledge of those experts it's like using the phrase so-called experts it's just to try and cast doubt on them and Nema what was the sentence that caused you to gasp in this in these statements it's it's saying none of the characters on the Papyrus fragments mentioned Abraham's name or any of the events recorded in the book of Abraham so that's the current Church of Jesus Christ the church's position right admitting that yeah and then they say Mormon and non-mormon Scholars agree on this right yeah yeah they so read it yeah no no keep going I was just going to read it if you just pull it up because I think it Bears repeating obviously it says it says Mormon and non-mormon egyptologists agree that the characters on the fragments do not match the translation given in the book of Abraham that should then just be another full stop but then they try and cast out and this is where I sighed and got frustrated because they say though there is no unanimity even among non-mormon Scholars the out group about the proper interpretation of the vignettes on these fragments but that's irrelevant because your Scholars and the non-mormon scholars agree that they do not match the translation given in the book of Abraham that's it right um really quickly I'm just gonna I'm gonna also refer again to this book Lighthouse and there are other books that even deal with this more but this chapter 9 of Lighthouse confirms that the the Mormon Church knew about the grammar alphabet of Egyptian language uh the Gale document they knew in the 1930s and 40s and 50s that that document existed that you know the this this book Chronicles different Mormon Scholars that had secret access to the Gale but of course the Gale was never made public at that point it was hidden and it was Kept Secret because the church likely knew that it would expose Joseph Smith as a fraud and it would have been Joseph Fielding Smith and others like him that would have kept it secret but then it also talked about the church discovering a couple years before the Tanners that these Papyrus were available um and it was a professor at the University of Utah labib Habachi of Cairo who got tipped off by Klaus bear um that these Papyrus were in existence so the Mormon church had a couple years of lead time to come clean and tell the world that well they had decades to tell the world that the grammar alphabet of Egyptian language was existed they hid that and kept it secret and they had a couple years of lead time to just say hey World hey Mormons we found the Papyrus it's a miracle but they didn't they kept it secret and they hid it and it wasn't until word got back to the Tanners and not just the Tanners but this really uh important mailman um Turned uh turned kind of scholar named Grant S Hayward who was literally a mailman who was friends with the Tanners who started studying Egyptian and he was one of the first people to actually you know as a Mormon as a faithful leaving Mormon he was one of the first to look at the facsimiles to study Egyptian and to uh to kind of call the church out from a believing Mormon perspective but the point is these Papyrus even though they were discovered in 1966 the church hid them until the Tanners and others made it uh made it known that they were in existence that that forced the church's hands so we don't just have the church admitting now in 2022 or in 2015 or whenever the essay came out we don't just have the church admitting that the word Abraham doesn't appear on the Papyrus and they have nothing to do with with Abraham but we have evidence that the church hid this information from the members for as long as it could Mike anything you want to add to that did I get that wrong no I mean that that's basically they've known and so this is not you know of course as we'll go in the next episode they have a lot of uh you know their own reasons why they try to make this work but yeah they've known that this doesn't match and obviously do not teach members about that until they start to have doubts and they send them to the essay which kind of admits it yeah so even though we've already already demonstrated that that the book of Abraham is is not an accurate translation let us let us continue with more evidence so uh should we go to the facsimile number one of the book of Abraham yeah and we don't need to read every single one of these um problems but yeah so basically effectively describe to our listeners what we are showing on the screen so that they understand kind of what what we're going to be discussing I mean should we put the fleximities on Instagram John like so that people that are listening to this could go to your page and look at them for sure but but just listening in their car what are you going to be describing Mike Yeah so basically on the left side we've got the actual um fact simile that's published with the book of Abraham and on the right side we've got two columns and one column is going to have what Joseph Smith claims each one of these numbered figures in the facsimile represent and then next to it we have what Egypt egyptologists have you know basically um declared they mean and and going you know kind of referencing back to our last slide yeah there are some small disagreements maybe about what these mean and the church wants to use that to make it sound like there's bigger disagreements this is more like saying this isn't saying like one person's like this is red no this is actually um some sort of you know lime green they're saying this is royal blue no maybe it's a regular blue or sky blue I mean we're these are not big differences and and so just give a tiny bit more of it description for those listening it's facsimile one is the picture of that man with kind of some type of black clothes or black skin holding what we were taught is a knife over a man lying down assumed what would be assumed to be a man lying down on a table and then there's a picture of a bird that's flying up above kind of to the right and the above and then we've got these jars or animals under the table and then some other kind of Earth looking stuff below so that's the picture that we're talking about and then we've got kind of a column that says what Joseph Smith said was in the picture and then a column saying what egyptologists all agree actually is in the scripture so do you want to tell us how Joseph got it wrong in the facsimile one Mike yeah I mean just you know basically he you know he's calling you know this bird on the right side the angel of the Lord and it's actually the spirit of horror um and then there's this this body that's laying on a table and this is what Joseph is saying as Abraham being fastened upon an altar to be sacrificed uh and what it really is is a deceased the deceased figure of horror being prepared for for burial and would it be Abraham or Isaac on the altar am I am I Abraham maybe abrahamian yeah in this one I'm sorry so I got that wrong it's not Abraham's sacrifices no this is Abraham being sacrificed Abraham you're gonna have to buy a priest by the priest of elkanah yeah okay okay I totally flubbed that I'm a little forgive me okay and just you know and then number three is to say that this is an idolatrous priest of elkana who's attempting to offer up Abraham as a sacrifice um but it's really Anubis the god of embalming that's preparing uh horror for for burial and so basically Joseph Smith is painting this as a scene of a human sacrifice being killed when in reality it's supposed to be a scene a funerary scene to get someone ready for the afterlife and and so basically all of these different translations that Joseph is making is to make this seem like Abraham's being murdered and when in reality it's about preparing someone for the afterlife and it just has nothing to do with Abraham um and so every one of these figures though the one thing you'll hear apologists say is um there are four uh jars that are under the the table and it says uh Joseph says the idolterous gods of elkana libna and Pharaoh um and those are you know in reality canopic jars uh contain the organs of deceased uh the of the deceased representing the four sons of the god Horus um and so sometimes they'll say oh Joseph had a hit there um but the name still don't line up and just overall here uh we've got a figure number 10 um which is um what Joseph Smith claims is basically like this the writing or like the name Abraham in Egyptian and it's a Libations table with wine oils and a plant so it just shows how far off Joseph is on these translations let me just ask why would in Joseph's mind would he have you know we all know about Abraham sacrificing Isaac why and why and Joseph Smith's mind would he have put Abraham down on the table uh you know potentially to be sacrificed was there is there anything in the Bible that would have suggested that Abraham was almost killed you know you know by a priest do either of you know why I have a theory okay my my initial thought would be that Mormonism and religion in general is full of archetypes and repeating patterns and so the idea that Abraham went through a a experience of almost being sacrificed and then there being a divine intervention plays into the idea that then he is able to do that to his son um having you know it being an example of Faith so there's that repeating pattern yeah we'll get into it um I think in the third episode but there's also kind of this um folklore uh there are there's one of the books mentions Abraham being sacrificed and so we'll get into that in the third one um but I'll tap my head I'm Rusty on that one so I'm not entirely sure the details but we will cover that in the third episode for sure stay tuned folks yeah exactly okay so that's not Abraham sacrificing Isaac that's that's Abraham almost being sacrificed by a priest but anyway the point is so pretty much everything in this facsimile Joseph got wrong infectiously Joseph got wrong according to Modern egyptologists right yes yeah okay which is what you would expect for a guy that doesn't know Egyptian right exactly yeah okay all right let's go to the next Josephine correctly fills in the gaps of FACS only one and this is an important one to know I know nimon mentioned this meal we were kind of get preparing for this one because you know not only do we have the Tran what Joseph claims these figures mean wrong but there are these gaps they call them lacunas in the Papyrus fragment and Joseph Smith is going to fill them in and so if this is truly and this will get into the Apologetics we'll get into this a little more next episode but if this was truly a revelatory process Joseph Smith should be filling these incorrectly and yeah he fills these in incorrectly and he's filling them in to match the story he's writing in the book of Abraham and so as we mentioned earlier this facsimile is a section from the breathing permit of horror and um Dr Robert Ritter talks about this and he says about facility on comparison of the surviving initial vignette of the Papyrus with facsimile one proves Beyond doubt as the LDS web host essay agrees that it was the vignette that became facsimile one however neither facsimile one nor two is a true copy and both contain added forgeries including the human head and knife of the supposed adulterous Priests of elkanah as can be seen in the crude pencil additions to the original Papyrus sheet as mounted and improved for publication by the LDS church in 1842 and so basically what he's saying is Joseph Smith here in if you're listening to this we have this up on the website as well but you can look at the picture and see where Joseph Smith is going to write in pencil what he thinks these figures should be and it matches what Joseph's writing in the book of Abraham but from a historical standpoint it's just completely not what it's supposed to be there it should not be a human head sacrificing it should be a jackal head and there should not be a knife there either and so this is another area where you could show Joseph Smith it just keeps getting it wrong as he keeps trying to translate and fix this Papyrus fragment all right Nemo anything you want to add to the Gap the gaps we could talk about those for days and and I think that's a lot of what gets talked about in the Robert Ritter episode so definitely go check those out um but I think it's in it's a telling I think it will be telling into Joseph Smith's mind and the way he was viewing these scenarios in what he chose to add because think about it he's looking at something and he is making a decision based on his ideas or thoughts or feelings as to what he's going to add what he thinks belongs in that space he knows a head needs to go on that torso because it's headless currently but what type of head a human head right yeah right well that's what he's thinking because he doesn't know about Anubis so he's not putting you know what I mean throwing a jackal head which any egyptologist would have done yeah draws a human head there exactly yeah so he's making his best guess of what he thinks should go there he thinks someone's standing over someone about to sacrifice my table so he adds a knife no knife should be there so yeah I think I think it's just really interesting to remember that these are decisions Joseph made because he was trying to try to flesh out a partial story right yep okay so that's more very conclusive evidence all right uh what do we learn from facsimile too so again we're going to be showing here facsimile 2 which is the circle the hypercephalus it's it's also known as the hypocephalus which was like you said Nemo under the head of the back of the head of the Mummy that were buried and it's basically just a bunch of different scenes with with hieroglyphics around the circumference of the the circle and then these are almost like cartoonish like vignettes of different scenes all with hieroglyphics in it so that's so that's what you're seeing is facsimile two and then again we have a column of what Joseph said each of these items were and what egyptologists now tell us they are Mike do you want to give us just kind of the highlights of the low light depending yeah I mean this is you know as Nemo said you know he's filling this in to kind of flesh out a story and I think he's using he's viewing this these Papyrus fragments he's viewing as a vehicle to push his new theology we've talked about that in other subjects where Joseph is going to use his surrounding opportunities to to use as a vehicle for his new ideas and actually that really quick Mike yeah so so a lot of our new listeners won't be familiar with the term um pseudopigrapha but pseudopigrapha means when somebody basically who who is alive today decides that they want to write something that they're going to claim is inspired or claims it's scripture or claim that it's authentic they're going to write in the voice of someone who's dead as if it's actually that person writing and then claim that it's that it's authentic and pseudopigrapha is an important term to understand because if Joseph just produces scripture um you know and says it's from him that's probably going to have a lot less weight to the listeners than if he produces scripture that he claims is from one of the ancient prophets so the reason why Joseph is going to be claiming to translate isn't just so that he can continue the perception that he has special power to translate but because he knows that if he's producing the words of sacred righteous Father Abraham then all the all the people in Kirtland and Abu are going to go ooh what else does Abraham have to tell us and it's going to give special power to what Joseph Smith produces Nemo Nemo or Mike do I have that right is that fitting here or is that not fitting yeah no and that's something Richard Bushman calls the book of Abraham pseudopigrapha so this is absolutely something that a lot of people kind of fall back I want to say Joseph is writing in the name of Abraham to give it credibility so people listen to it I mean it's the short of it okay all right and so so what basically he's got doctrine that he wants to share but he doesn't want to share it in his own name so he wants to share it in the name of Abraham and so he's going to look at this facsimile too and he's going to inject Doctrine he wants to share into these Egyptian images right yeah okay and 100 and how does he get it wrong yeah and so just you know a couple of them we don't we don't need to read all these but like the you know the main one is it says collab the residents of God um it's actually the four-headed Ram god um kanumo and kuranumo uh so obviously it's not the residence of God it's a ram um you know and then we've got some other ones God we'll get to one look at one of them in a few slides actually um and and then there's you know there's a bunch of them that'll say like we'll be given in the own due time of the Lord except like again any egyptologist can look and read what they are so um you know we have some that'll be uh talk about you know um also if the world can find out these numbers so let it be amen it's actually oh God the sleeping ones from the time of creation so it's not even a number it's just a phrase and so it's just kind of weird um that in some of these it's almost like Joseph is punting and not kind of translating them I don't know if it's he was rushed or what but you know we have all these words that say will be given in the entire time of the Lord and yet they're not revealed in the temple they're not revealed by Joseph Smith they're just figured out by egyptologists who can read this and so all of this shows you he's getting it wrong and what's really interesting about facsimile too is I think Nemo mentioned this earlier this is a hypocephalus which is buried um it's put under your head to help you you know move to the next the afterlife but what's interesting is this is not from the same mummy as facsimile one or three so Joseph Smith is utilizing this as if it's Abraham and it's not so in other words say John you pass on and they put a funerary text for you and Nemo you pass on they put a funerary text for you and I say I've got the Book of John delin and all of a sudden I'm using material from from Nemo's stuff into John's and I'm still calling it John it just shows how Joseph Smith didn't understand what he was working with and so now he's using someone else's funerary text and then still saying it's Abraham so that alone tells you he has no idea what he's what he's dealing with when he's when he's making these translations but my funeral text would vastly improve the Book of John dilyn we should [Laughter] this is my little white copy of the Book of Mormon um that I put together myself uh and when I was in the temple as a temple worker this is what I'd sit and read from um now I was reading one of the temple copies of the pearl of a great price and in the back here you can see I wrote out the audience may not be able to see that very well but I wrote out some of the little hieroglyphics there you go you see them better next to my face I wrote out some of the hieroglyphics because one of those that you pointed out Mike says contains writings that cannot be revealed um in the temple of God Joseph wrote that sorry yes yeah yeah so Joseph wrote that about those so I'm here sat in the temple spending all my time in all my days in the temple trying to work it out I've got old men the in the 60s 70s whatever who were then trying to tell me oh yeah no you'll work this out one day when you know you know you'll understand and uh what does that actually say Mike can you just vindicate me pull up that thing for me I can read it it says grant that The Souls of Osiris shishank may live so Joseph writes Joseph writes contains writings that cannot be revealed unto the world that is to be had in the Holy Temple of God and what the Egyptians say universally that it actually says is grant that the soul of Osiris shishank may live and the reason I want to bring this up is because if if things are left vague like that people will project in their own stuff if you look at some of these little hieroglyphics they are three little prongs on top of a line that look like hands in the air anyone's been through the temple throwing your hands in the air three times significant so all of a sudden I'm reading into that going oh I wonder then what that is and then there's three markings together oh I wonder what that is and so because it's been left vague people might put that as a downside for Joseph Smith but actually some of the success in this being religiously significant to people for so long is that he didn't reveal all of it he left some of it vague so that people could keep throwing their own meaning into it over the years all right Mike anything else you want to say about facsimile too not in that slide but we've got some more slides on factionally too all right let's go to the next slide Joseph again incorrectly fills in the gaps of facsimile too so are we saying that we don't have all effects simile 2 or at least you know Joseph didn't or what are we saying there Yeah so basically just like with facsimile one there's going to be these parts of of of this facsimile that are missing and so Joseph Smith is going to fill them in because he feels like he needs to have a full uh facsimile and so what I find fascinating and this is one if you're listening to this please go to either go to either LDS discussions.com uh John can post some of these as well on Instagram but you need to see where Joseph Smith is pulling from to fill in these facsimiles because this to me is one of the smoking guns of knowing we have the source material uh because if you look at it you could see that Joseph Smith is filling all of the blank spaces in the facsimile from the Papyrus fragment that has been recovered and was not lost as they had originally thought so this is really important and John if you want you can just go to the next slide okay next slide um here you go so in the next slide if you and again you need to watch this or go to the website but um every part that is being pulled into facts only two is going to be in this area that's circled on the image on on the slide right now and so Joseph Smith is pulling characters into fact simile 2 that are just to the left of a facsimile one um and so we'll get into this a lot more in the next episode but if there was a lost scroll uh that contained the real book of Abraham there's no way that Joseph Smith is going to fill in fact simile 2 which has nothing to do with facility one they're different people Scrolls um except for the fact that this is where he's pulling from because this is what he believes uh is the source text of the actual book of Abraham and so to me this was one of those ones it's bad enough he's pulling in the wrong stuff to fill in fact simile too um which we'll show on the next slide but the where he's pulling from to me is just as telling I just can't think of a of a genuine reason why if he knows he's making it up then sure just grab any bits of random Egyptian text you like from anywhere and just throw it in to fill in the gaps if if he's making up in your nose that's what he's doing I just can't think of a genuine reason why if he believes he's truly translating why he would take it from one piece and put it there randomly I don't understand it anymore tell me if what you're saying is that this this this fact that he takes text from one facsimile and inserts it in the missing areas of another you're saying that that might be an indication that he knew he wasn't really translating yeah to me yeah to me that points that he's trying to build a story rather than actually genuinely translate the text in that meaning of the of the word yeah let's just say you're translating The Source text of Dr Seuss Green Eggs and Ham that it was originally written in French and all of a sudden you know part of the documents missing you wouldn't go to Casper the Friendly Ghost book and just insert text from a totally different book into uh because that would make no sense for for the story and for the reader you just wouldn't do that yeah yeah you would just you would just acknowledge that it's missing and either say that God gave you the missing parts and filled in the gaps for you or that you just don't it's not there God didn't give you that part yeah yeah and so Mike tell me if I'm right well we see in the next slide that's entitled what facsimile 2 uh should have been restored to we've got we've got Joseph Smith filling in the blanks and in black is that what he would have had in the facsimile too and then orange is what he filled into the parts that were missing and and uh we know that we know where that fill-in text comes from and then we have next to it what it should have looked like um based on actual legitimate egyptologists is that what that slide is telling us yeah and to me the biggest takeaway besides the fact he's pulling from what I believe is the source material for the book Abraham is that a lot of the text he pulls in a lot of those Egyptian characters he was pulling him in because he thought they were lost on the on the hypocephalus but they actually weren't they were in they were meant to be blank and he's pulling in characters there because I think he's like why is the left side gali's characters but the right side doesn't so he's just pulling in these characters where he what it's not even that he got it wrong in that case they just they shouldn't have been there in the first place okay that makes sense let's jump to uh the next slide which is the Mormon church castrates God and then reattaches his manhood I guess we need to give a PG-13 or even a r rating not really yeah but in reality we're going to be talking about an Egyptian depiction of a penis that the church removed and then put back in and Joseph Smith's mistranslation of it go ahead Mike yeah and this is one we don't have to spend much time on but to me that I just found this kind of both humorous and also troubling not because of the fact that it's a an erect penis but Joseph Smith interprets figure seven effects only two as God sitting on his throne revealing through the heavens the grand keywords of the priesthood um in reality this is the Egyptian god men uh the god of fertility with an erect penis and the fact is so now he's saying God's sitting on his throne revealing through the heavens the grand keywords the priesthood is actually uh an Egyptian god with an erect penis which is troubling uh by itself but what happens is the church at some point realizes this as as you know egyptologists start to tell them that they got it wrong and at some point they actually removed the penis out of the facsimiles when they print the Book of Mormon and then sometime I think it actually happens a little bit before 1981 they start putting they basically reattach this erect penis to this facility because of the fact that people are now calling them out for altering the fact simile because of the fact that Joseph Smith got it so embarrassingly wrong and so in today's Book of Mormon you'll see um basically God sitting on his throne with an erect penis and again it's not I don't want to hype on you know I'm not trying to make it sensationalistic as far as the I just find it kind of humorous because the church obviously was embarrassed by what Joseph Smith did because he got it wrong and took it out because they didn't want to be showing an erect penis in their facts simply but it's it's there I'm seeing I'm hearing three things wrong there number one is that the church is ashamed at penises and so it's it's heavy it's feeling like it needs to remove them because what it's pornography or it's graphic even though it's an ancient document but the second is the church would take liberties to be altering a document from its original form that's a little bit problematic but then the most problematic thing of all is that Joseph just completely misnames who that figure should be Nemo anything you want to add no I mean from what I remember he um he ejaculates the world into existence if we want to make this you know even more PG-13 unfriendly yeah um but that's it's just a genuine part of Egyptian kind of Mythology and and the way that that they view the world and like I said I think the most telling thing is that they've recognized that's what it was and then tried to censor it through their sensibilities yeah all right so what's the bigger problem with facsimile too Mike yeah and this is what we talked about a few minutes ago it's just this is not part of the same mummy or the same person that facsimile one in fact simile 3 is from and so I already kind of mentioned this but the fact that Joseph is pulling someone else's scroll into you know into facsimile too just shows you he had no idea what he was translating and so um as I mentioned earlier again it'll be like if I had the Book of John and I thought there was a piece missing I just started writing in stuff from the book of Nemo that's not it just it would show that I have no idea what the story of John was because I'm all of a sudden just randomly throwing in stuff from Nemo and so the fact that he's pulling this in um into the book Abraham tells you he doesn't understand what he's working with which is a big problem that'll be talked about in this episode and the episode on apologetics as well all right so the next slide is the facts only three creates the biggest Smoking Gun for Joseph Smith so this is important yeah so this to me is like you know the Smoking Gun for the book Abraham because as we've talked about even if you don't have the source material this is printed this is no one denies that this is what Joseph Smith is working with with regards to facts Emily three and in fact simply three there are Egyptian characters that Joseph Smith is going to translate and so for example uh figure four says Prince of pharaoh king of Egypt as written above the hand so he's saying that's what that's what's written in the um Egyptian characters and what it actually says is the goddess I think it's Matt um so it's it's a female figure not a prince um the goddess of Justice identified by the feather on her on her head and the writing above her hand which states Matt Mistress of the Gods and so Joseph Smith here without any there's there's no way to argue that Joseph Smith is translating Egyptian characters and he's getting them wrong so even if you want to say that he got the figures wrong because the figures are more like illusionary like an allegory whatever these are Egyptian characters that he is translating wrong so to me this tells you that even without the source material we can tell you without any doubt without any question that Joseph Smith could not translate Egyptian characters so we don't even need what I'm hearing you say is we don't even need the Scrolls the Papyrus to show that Joseph couldn't translate because these facsimiles specifically affects some of the three he's not just interpreting the figures but he's actually translating hieroglyphics in fact simile 3 and he's basically calling Osiris Abraham he's calling Isis king Pharaoh um he's calling you know the goddess Matt Prince pharaoh and getting the gender wrong like he's getting it all wrong the the the hieroglyphics and the figures is that right yeah and and not only that but then um if you go back to that slide um the figure on the right he is going to identify is uh I said Anubis no that's what that's what actually is but Joseph Smith a slave belonging to the prince so Joseph Smith here and remember that we talked about this in the episodes on race and the priesthood the book of Abraham is basically where the priesthood ban is going to come from because it talks about how the people with the curse of Cain or curse of ham come from a race that could not help the priesthood so he's saying people with black skin can't hold the priest said well he looks at this fact simile he sees one black figure he identifies him as a slave um you know in fact simile three you know Joseph Smith not only is he translating the characters wrong he's identifying females as males because of course you can't have a PR a primary female character you know as Joseph Smith does not do in the book Abraham or Book of Mormon and then now you've got Joseph Smith sing a figure that's black and identifying them as a slave because that has to fit in to what they are doing in the 19th century of slavery and what he's doing by saying that having black skin is a curse you can't have it be a God because it wouldn't fit with the Theology of the Mormon Church yeah so we've got it's just basically seeing someone black oh it must be a slave and then immediately associating it with the curse of Kane which now the Mormon church denounces is folklore not his Doctrine so that really is condemning Nemo were you gonna add something yeah what's crazy though is you go back to facility one and there's also a black figure but that black figure some kind of priest huh someone with some sort of authority right until he put a head on that made them white oh the hands still black so it's like it kind of it's strange it's not even internally consistent because on one hand he's seen a black figure and just made them uh a slave but in the other he's seen a black figure put a white head on it but there's still a black figure and he's made them a priest right yeah and it's the same character I mean they're both Anubis and so like Anubis yeah it just shows he has no idea what he's working with I mean in every testable way he's showing I you know he can't do it and and like we've talked about this whole episode I I don't sometimes you just go why do we need to keep doing this but we do because we want to make sure we give it proper detail but yeah this is it's pretty clear to take it a little bit further now if we go back it turns out that that figure that Joseph Smith calls a slave which is Anubis if we go to the actual um yeah this is the wood cut that they use to print this is what they're using to print in the Book of Mormon and this is um uh Paul Osborne he had posted about this I think about two or three years ago so this is pretty recent he was looking at the super high resolution image of this wood cut and if you look and this is something if you're listening um go to LDS discussions.com and check out these images um but basically you could see these chisel marks that line up perfectly with what would be the snout of Anubis and so of course we can't know for sure if Joseph Smith really had the woodcut altar to make it look more human but it certainly looks like by looking at the the high resolution image of the woodcut that Joseph I think at some point realizes you can't have a slave with it with the kind of that snout uh and so he cuts off the snout of Anubis and makes it more of a round head so that it fits with his um his basically translation of that figure and it just further shows how Joseph is altering um these uh Papyrus fragments in ways that are just so badly incorrect so you're saying the woodcut should show a snout like what like some type of Jackal yeah but Jackal had somebody's somebody's chipped off the snout to make it look like a human so that it can look like a human slave is that what you're saying yeah Joseph could have easily passed off as a mask or something you know he could have easily passed it off as something decorative or whatever I I remain confused as to why he did that yeah yeah I don't I don't know why because sometimes you just I had this discussion with someone recently about something else entirely they were talking about like why do people do these things once they're kind of caught up and stuff and it's like I think sometimes you just do it because you keep trying to make it work and you just keep thinking if you do it no one will figure it out but eventually in this case you could figure it out by like 10 different ways and it just shows he couldn't do it and and it's so simple yet again we still have so much more to talk about so it's such a weird subject to me sometimes all right well Dr rittner sums up the problem with what you call the Smoking Gun FACS 73 Mike what is it yeah and so this is what uh Dr rittner said about facsimile three he says and again this is because of the fact that Joseph is translating actual characters and not just figures now and so he says in fact simile 3 Smith confuses human and animal heads and males with females no amount of special pleading can change the female Isis the great the God's mother into the male king of pharaoh whose name is given in the characters above his hand as even the LDS author Michael D Rhodes accepts here Smith also misunderstands Pharaoh as a personal name rather than a title meaning King so he reads king king for a goddess's name that he claims to have understood on the papyrus so it's just like we talked about even if you don't have any of the fragments ever found in fact simile 3 alone allows us to measure Joseph's prophetic claims because not only do we have the figures that can be understood today by egyptologists but those Egyptian characters that he claims to be translating tell us that there is no way that you can reconcile his translation of Egyptian characters with what they actually say and so as we mentioned earlier we've got a Libations table that he says there's a literal signature of Abraham or the female Isis is king Pharaoh uh which is probably not just from the translation of the characters but just a complete misunderstanding of the gender of the idea that pharaohs that is a title it's just all of this everywhere it's just so bad that if someone turned this in for like a school assignment you would get like a zero percent because there's just nothing nothing works here at all it's just it's crazy sometimes to take a step back and just look at all of the things he got wrong and the fact that he's adding in things that are even more wrong it's just it's mind-boggling sometimes just to make a quick point I think that it's worth repeating for people is that these are well-established funerary texts and scenes the reason we can say this should be this is because so many of them that exist that all follow the same patterns there's a wealth of evidence that these certain scenes these hypercephali all these things that we're talking about are repeated over and over and over and over again and are well understood by people like Dr rittner by egyptologists they know what these things should look like I mean imagine if in Egypt every time they're buried a prince they buried the book Green Eggs and Ham you would know exactly what every page was what every figure was you would know the story because it was literally buried with every prince yeah just every time it's that repetitive it's almost as if it's the same book published you know dozens and dozens there's no reason why these would be so vastly different with all the additions that Joseph Smith made knives where there shouldn't be knives remove the phalluses Jackal heads gone human heads added all those things there's no reason any of those should be there because we know what should be there in their place all right so tell us about the recovered fragments in the book of Abraham manuscripts Mike yeah now this one's going to be extremely important for our next episode so we're going to talk about this a ton in the next episode but from the re from the recovered uh Papyrus fragment and this is right next to facts only one which we showed the image of a while back when we were kind of talking about where Joseph's pulling from all of the manuscripts line up perfectly with the recovered Papyrus fragment that's right next to fact simile one and that's just where the book of Abraham tells us to look for the language that's being translated and so as Nemo had mentioned earlier Joseph like everybody in his time frame for the most part I think all believe that one symbol in Egyptian could contain phrases and even paragraphs and of text so if you're looking at these images if you're watching this you could see that each symbol or group of maybe like two or three symbols is going to be an entire paragraph of text and so if you're if you're listening to this again check out the website but effectively uh Joseph was was taking one character or two characters and creating multiple sentences or paragraphs of text from just one or two symbols that's something that bears kind of really slowing down to repeat we all got the impression somehow that one Egyptian character could amount to a sentence or to multiple sentences and that's just false that's what Joseph Smith thought that's what we've all been led to believe but the truth is one hieroglyphic in Egypt amounts to a few sounds to a word or two at most but here we have the actual evidence and is this part of the Gale is that right Mike no this is the actual Book of Mormon man or sorry book Abraham manuscript book of Abraham manuscript and what you have is you just have it very clearly demonstrated that Joseph was attributing sentences worth of words to a single Egyptian character or you know one or two characters is that right yeah yeah that's what he's doing um which is bizarre because like yeah at most it's a concept you know a lot of these languages like you look at Mandarin you look at uh you look at Japanese you look at any of these languages Korean are based around symbols still because languages like this exist hieroglyphics are still a thing right they're just slightly different now but yeah our symbol will will be at most a concept if not just it might sound yeah and Mike to drive that home we've got what Joseph Smith translates what should be the word Lake into in the book of Abraham yeah and this is from your episodes with Dr Whitner and so um if you're watching this you could see it if you're listening to it again you'll you'll be better much better by going to either LDS discussions or going to this on YouTube or whatever but um Joseph Smith is going to take two symbols uh and those two symbols are going to mean the word like in the in in Egyptian and so there's one symbol that's in the upper right uh circled in blue and that's the phonetic part of the word Lake in the symbol right below it which is a backwards looking e is the determinative symbol for the word and so in other words in Egypt the first symbol is the spelling of the word Lake the second symbol is the determinative of water and so Joseph Smith is going to take what actually just means the word Lake in the book of Abraham he's going to write four separate verses based on that one word and so it just shows Joseph's misunderstanding of Egyptian here leads him to do something that is just so so wrong to the point that if you show like again you know Nemo said it earlier what would you say if this is another religion or another another leader it's so laughably wrong because it's the word Lake and yet Joseph's gonna write four verses based on it four verses would represent at least four if not more sentences from what be what should be a single word right yeah and we know what the word means so not only is it not multiple sentences it should just say link because we know that it's Lake the symbols mean Lake correct yeah yeah I mean it's just that simple like it's like it should not that alone should tell you he couldn't translate I mean the fact similarly should tell you that but even in the manuscript itself we could look at it we know what the symbols in the manuscript mean and obviously nothing like that okay so so obviously apologists are going to say that maybe well maybe Joseph didn't really think he was translating you've got a slide here that basically asserts Joseph Smith absolute claimed and you're saying even believed that this was a translation yeah and so this is one we're going to talk about a lot in the next episode because this is really important for apologetics but it just shows that from 1835 to March of 1842 Joseph Smith in his journals is consistently using the word translation and translating when talking about the book Abraham so I'll say this afternoon this afternoon I recommend translating from the ancient records or he'll say the weather is warm but rainy we spent the day in translating and made rapid progress at home we spent the day transcribing Egyptian characters from the Papyrus we commence the work of translating the Egyptian translating the book of Abraham it's just just to show that this isn't something where we're trying to put the word translation on to Joseph this is what he's using to describe the process of creating the book of Abraham so this slide shows nine different entries from Joseph Smith's Journal where he himself claims to be translating and this fits now not only with the title page right which claims to be a translation we already read that previously but it fits with the Doctrine and Covenants declaration that Joseph Smith is indeed a prophet Seer Revelator and translator and the reason why there's going to be a lot of people going why are you even questioning that anyone would refer to it as a translation it's because I attended an entire like multi-day conference at Utah State University where Terrell Gibbons Richard Bushman you know Patrick Mason Spencer flumin a ton of the church's top Scholars dedicated two full days at least to saying why when when we use the word translation maybe other words would have been more relevant or appropriate like Revelation it's because in the modern Mormon Church the Neo apologists need to walk back the use of the word because there's no Universe where the word translation actually applies to what Joseph Smith did and the church and they know it and the church now admits it in 2022. and yet go ahead that is the word Joseph Smith chose to use yeah and and the title page claims that is the word on the title page and again Mike T you know you got this next slide it it's even the church's own Gospel topics essay that tells us Joseph Smith got it wrong yeah and we talked about this earlier so these are the two sentences from the paragraph I put paragraph above I should have meant paragraph earlier in the in the presentation that really should put an end to any discussion about the book of Abraham being an ancient authentic text one is none of the characters on the Papyrus fragments mention Abraham's name or any of the events recorded in the book of Abraham and the second is these fragments date to between the third Century BCE and the first century CE long after Abraham lived and just as we said if if you had seen this from any other religious leader or any other church that claimed to have this ancient translation that we now know has nothing to do with the subject and is dated well after would you what would you say as far as your level of of belief in in their claims because it this is the church's own essay is telling telling us these very very basic and testable claims are false emo if you want to add that's it's a massive shelf break for people because it's one of the few times in the church's essay that and the several months shy of her 15th birthday line um and all that sort of thing I would add when the church downplays our racist teachings as folklore that would be the third the Holy Trinity of shelf Breakers yeah you're admitting that that Abraham the word Abraham doesn't appear in the papyrus use you know calling a 14 year old girl describing her as several months shiver 15th birthday and uh denouncing all the Mormon racist Doctrine as dismissing it as merely folklore those are the three yeah I'd say so and I'd say this is really important and so many people when they say hang on when they have that hang on wait a moment it's this because the church has no recourse other than to admit it isn't what they said it was or isn't what's certainly what Joseph Smith claimed it to be right yeah all right Mike so we're at our final slide which means we did a speed record here the slide is the book of Abraham translation is quite simple tell us how quite simple it is Mike yeah and so like we've been talking about this throughout the episode but we're going to spend three or maybe four episodes talking about the book of Abraham but it's something you could sum up in in really just like two minutes Joseph Smith made claims in the voice of God that he could translate ancient languages and in this case makes very clear claims about what the Papyrus fragments say and again this is from the book of Abraham's trans introduction a translation of some ancient records that have fallen into our hands from the catacombs of Egypt purporting to be the writings of Abraham while he was in Egypt called The Book of Abraham written by his own hand upon Papyrus all of those claims have turned out to be incorrect uh Joseph Smith not only translated the figures and the facsimiles incorrectly but the Egyptian characters that are contained in fact simile 3 are completely wrong so even without the source text which we also have and we'll talk about that a lot in the next episode we could show that they're wrong the church admits that the dating is wrong that means it couldn't have been written by Abraham's own hand upon Papyrus and then where Joseph Smith had a chance to fill in the facsimiles he filled them in incorrectly and so at the end of the day like this episode alone should tell anyone watching that Joseph Smith was not a prophet of God because of the fact that he makes very testable claims not knowing that Egyptian would be cracked and then as soon as it's cracked we know it's just you know he got it wrong all right well that's case closed so Mike as we're wrapping up this episode remind us what we've got in store for the next few episodes on book of Abraham yeah so the next episode is going to focus entirely on the Apologetics to this episode so we're going to talk about the long lost scroll theories the Catalyst Theory and then after that we'll look at the actual text of the book Abraham um which is a I think a good way to give a different perspective to um the book Abraham because of the fact that um even if you don't have the source material you can look at the text of the book Abraham and know that it's full of the same errors that tell you it's not an ancient text that we covered uh with the Book of Mormon okay excellent Nemo any final words from Nemo the Great no I don't know what else you can say about this so um I just look forward to talking about I look forward to ripping apart the apologists arguments about this because it's such an indefensible point of view yeah for me it really is one of the major smoking guns um and uh yeah and and so uh thank you Mike thank you Nemo uh it's so important to have you all here we're looking forward to have you on next time and I'll just conclude uh the way I started you can find all of these episodes on Spotify both audio or video format under the LDS discussions brand as well as integrated into the Mormon stories podcast feed you can also go to the YouTube channel under the LDS discussions playlist and view all of these in succession all of these episodes are available on the Apple podcast app as well and then finally I just can't enough give credit and respect to the late Dr Robert Ridner and if you want to check out our 13 hours with me and radio free Mormon and Dr Robert Ridner uh may he rest in peace you can also find those in the show notes um and you can find them at Mormon stores podcast so again thanks so much Mike thanks so much Nemo thanks to everyone who makes this series possible if you appreciate the LDS discussion series and you want to see content like this continue we would really appreciate you becoming a monthly donor you can go to mormonstorage.org click on the Donate button and just sign up for any monthly contribution that you feel like you can afford 10 bucks a month you know 20 bucks a month 50 bucks a month 100 bucks a month whatever you can afford we promise uh our we're tax deductible in the U.S we're transparent in our finances from the very beginning we release our 990 so that everyone can see how we spend our money and we promise to work really hard to make sure that every dollar that that you donate goes in some way towards this cause of educating Mormons educating never Mormons educating the world about the truth about uh the Mormon Church's truth claims and uh providing healing and support and inspiration to people questioning their Mormon faith or people who choose to leave or need to leave and to help them find support in community on the other end that's what we do uh please support us if you can thanks so much uh to everyone and we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon stories take care everybody