Hey guys! In the last episode we talked about the relationship between Joseph
Smith's Egyptian papyri and the Latter-day Saint book of Abraham.
As promised, in this episode we're going to talk about the facsimiles included in
the Book of Abraham Let's see what we can find out.
So there's a lot we could discuss about the facsimiles but let's just jump right
into the controversy because why not? "Bring it on."
Do Joseph's interpretations of these Egyptian illustrations
match those of modern egyptologists? And the answer to that
is, in general, no they don't. For example, Joseph said this was about
Abraham on Pharaoh's throne talking to Pharaoh's court about astronomy
but egyptologists say it's a deceased individual being led to the throne of
Osiris, God of the Underworld. So how do we
reconcile these apparent misinterpretations? "I don't know."
Well, people generally fall into one of three categories when it comes to the
interpretations of the facsimiles. 1. Nothing is inspired, 2. Everything is
inspired, or 3. Some parts are inspired and some are
not. The first group believes that since there
are discrepancies between what egyptologists say
and what Joseph said, nothing about Joseph's interpretations are inspired. In
other words, Joseph made it all up. "You calling me a liar?
I ain't calling you a truther." Some people present this case as if it's a
smoking gun and that anyone who still believes Joseph was a prophet
is being willfully ignorant or academically dishonest. You're certainly
free to believe that-- it's an easy way to shrug off Joseph's prophetic claims
and this theory can explain the things Joseph got wrong. But it fails to explain
the things Joseph actually got right from an egyptological perspective. For
example, putting yourself in Joseph Smith's day
when virtually nothing was known about ancient Egyptian,
what would be your guess as to what these four figures from facsimile 2
represent?
Joseph said they represented this earth in its four quarters.
Modern egyptologists say that these are the four sons of
Horus and one of their roles was to represent
the four cardinal directions. Joseph gets this one right.
"Average Joe's wins in a shocking upset. I feel shocked." Or take this figure from
facsimile one. What would you imagine this crocodile might represent?
Joseph said it was the idolatrous God of Pharaoh.
Modern egyptologists say it's probably the crocodile deity, Sobek, who, among
other things, was closely associated with the pharaoh
of Egypt. Once again joseph nails it and other
examples could be given. Proponents of theory one have to decide
what to do with the stuff Joseph gets right and they often
attribute it to luck or coincidence which
happens shockingly often for this Joseph Smith guy, but theory one is on the table.
For some people though, luck is not an adequate explanation and they
adhere to one of the two other theories. The second theory is that
everything Joseph said about these three illustrations
is inspired and correct and we're just missing too many pieces of the puzzle
to be able to understand how that is. "Something here I'm not quite getting,
though I try, I keep forgetting." So this would assume that egyptologists are
either wrong or barking up the wrong tree altogether.
Maybe Joseph was never giving an interpretation of what ancient Egyptians
would have thought about these illustrations,
maybe it's how ancient Jews in Egypt would have interpreted them or maybe
they held unique meaning to the priests who had access to these papyri. There are
several different theories but unfortunately none of them can be proven,
yet, theory two is on the table. The third
option is that Joseph's interpretations are partially inspired and partially not.
Latter-day Saints certainly believe that prophets, just like any human, can
get things wrong sometimes. Even the introduction to the Book of Mormon
itself says, "If there are faults, they are the
mistakes of men." It's clear that Joseph Smith was very interested academically
in these ancient Egyptian artifacts and as most any person of faith could
probably attest to, sometimes it's not always easy to differentiate between
your own thoughts and opinions and revelation from the Spirit of God.
That may sometimes have been the case for Joseph Smith as well.
This theory could explain how he nails some of these interpretations that he
should have been clueless about and why many of his other
interpretations don't match what modern egyptologists
think they should mean. "I was way off. I knew it started with an S though."
But that begs the question, "Why would God allow Joseph to get some of this
wrong?" I don't know. But it could be that these mistakes, if that's what they are,
just weren't all that doctrinally significant. Joseph said this guy's name
was Shulem. Egyptologists say it's Hor. I wouldn't
care if it turned out to be Steve. It isn't doctrinally important.
"Steve." To the Latter-day Saints, the text of the Book of Abraham is infinitely more
important than the facsimiles. In all reality, we rarely do anything in
our faith with the facsimiles. They're fun
curiosities but not super relevant to our beliefs.
The believability of the text of the Book of Abraham is much more important
and for more info on that, check out this video from Pearl of Great Price Central.
So those are the three theories that people generally adhere to. Pick
whichever one you believe is right or none at all but also try to understand
and respect those who adhere to a different theory than you,
whether you're a member of our faith or not. Check out the resources and notes in
the YouTube description below if you want to dive deeper into this topic
and have a great day.