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Originally Posted by nuclearunderpants
You are right that these issues only butress my main issue. Your suggesting that my disbelief clouds my objectivity in evaluating the issues. I could suggest the opposite about you, but I don't know your position as it has not been articulated. I do have a mocking picture of a scarecrow though. I do say that I am offended at the harsh response. I take the matter of my religion (or lack thereof) very seriously. I have struggled with it and tried to come to a place where I am at peace.
The churches willingness to hide the truth in many cases has lead to a lot of hurt.
On point one---The church for many years held and taught that Joseph came into possession of papyri that contained the writings of Abraham and Joseph of Egypt. They also maintained that Joseph translated the papyri to produce the Book of Abraham. The claim was not that the Abraham papyrus was a copy, or a stimulus to receive revelation about Abraham. The claim was (and is) that the papyrus was written by Abraham himself and that Joseph translated it. Joseph himself made this claim. He even produced an Egyptian alphabet and grammar to evidence his ability as a translator.
The favorite response is to indicate the lack of cubrics [sp?] in the Sensen fragment and say we don't have the right papyrus. I feel this is stretching since the other papyrus found has red ink and fits the description of the Book of Joseph.
The other response is to look at the Book of Abraham and parallels of ongoing Abrahamic scholarly work. The idea being to prove the text of the "translation" correct.
I don't buy either explanation. The case that the Sensen fragment is the Abraham papyrus is very strong, including the drawn in facsimile and the translation text with the Egyptian characters added down the side.
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I apologize; I had not meant to offend. I was probably overboard on that.
I'll briefly wrap up my views by saying that I've heard the arguments you give as conclusive and they don't bother me a bit. I have no doubt that you've heard the arguments I've found as conclusive, and that they likewise don't bother you. The issue, therefore, runs quite a bit deeper than these little details. There's little sense in rehashing these issues when 1), neither of us are going to be convinced by them, and 2), they're not the main issues anyway. We'll both save a lot of time by avoiding arguments over non-issues and getting to the heart of the matter.