"Book of Abraham"/Joseph Smith papyri
 

I assume there is no disagreement from anyone about the following points 1) through 3):

1) The papayri commonly known as the "Joseph Smith papyri" that in 1967 were discovered in the NY Metropoitan Museum are the same papyri from which Joseph Smith said he translated the Book of Abraham. Agreed?

2) Mainstream Egytologists and Hugh Nibley agree that the Joseph Smith Papyri do not say what Joseph Smith said they said, i.e., the contents of the Book of Abraham. Agreed?

3) Mainstream Egyptologists and Hugh Nibley agree that the Joseph Smith Papyri were generated in the First Century A.D., or over a thousand years after it is estimated the Biblical character know as Abraham would have lived. Agreed?

I find the almost complete lack of discussion in Mormon circles of the Joseph papyri to be both surprising and illuminating. I only bring this up for this reason. Among a highly rarified group this is a highly controvertial subject.

I don't claim to be an expert on this subject by any means; I basically know the foregoing. (I'm embarrased to say this but will confess that I didn't know anything about this subject long after I ceased to be an active Mormon, which I still find both surprising and illuminating.) Except for the foregoing the subject really holds little interest for me.

This is a hard subject to deal with for apologists and people with beliefs that contradict those of the church. The scholarship on either side is incomplete and not thorough.

The idea that the translation of the BOA was actually from a Book of Breathings, opens a lot of negative possibilites for latter day saints. For example, as we know, Joseph didn't 'translate' the Book of Mormon as much as received revelation to it's contents so who is to say that the Book of Mormon is a direct translation and not some story told by divine revelation?

Number 2 doesn't sound quite right. Nibley agreed that the recovered papyri was not the source of the Book of Abraham. It is still possible that a portion of the papyri that was NOT recovered WAS the source.

The silence on the issue is largely a result of the fact that nobody really knows what they are. A rather hefty book was just published on the Joseph Smith Papyri, and when I looked through the thing, I couldn't understand a single thing that was going on. There just aren't enough people qualified enough to comment on the matter, much less any sort of unity opposing the LDS position.

There are easier fish to fry, anyway. If you want to criticize the church, polygamy is much, much easier to try to take on than the book of Abraham.

My understanding is that what has been found constitutes approx. 13% of the scrolls Joseph used to "translate" the book of Abraham. I think (and I'm going off of things I read a while back so forgive me) that one of the facsimile's was recovered and that it does not match up to Joseph's translation.

After studying Joseph's preferred manner of translation with the Book of Mormon this doesn't trouble me much.