The Backyard Professor

Nothing is Right.... Nothing is right! On Kolob

Nothing is Right…. Nothing is Right…. The Anti-Mormon Comments on the Book of Abraham Facsimiles

 

By Kerry A. Shirts

 

John Ankerberg and John Weldon’s book Behind the Mask of Mormonism, contends that Egyptologists have proclaimed that nothing Joseph Smith translated in the Book of Abraham was correct. They quote an archaeologist, a Dr. Richard Fales as saying “Joseph Smith did not get right even one word in this whole translation.” 1 They then use Gleason Archer, a fine Bible scholar, as saying that the facsimiles have also been shown to be incorrect. “Their findings [the Egyptologists of 1912] was that not a single word of Joseph Smith’s alleged translation bore any resemblance to the contents of this document.”2

 

These are fundamentally incorrect conclusions however, especially concerning the Facsimiles in the Book of Abraham. I will concentrate on a couple of particularly interesting correlations with the facsimiles, since they have been attacked mercilessly through the years, always without going into the Egyptian writings and concepts themselves. The key element in criticisms I am responding to in this paper is the principle claim that there is nothing that Joseph Smith said that has been correct or even plausible. James White rather adamantly claimed Joseph Smith “…grossly misidentified each of the items not only in this facsimile, but in the other two as well.”3

Divine Kingship in Facsimile 3 & Ancient Near East

Ancient Near Eastern scholar David Bokovoy shares some very interesting information on Divine Kingship in Ancient Israel and the Ancient Near East, and how this is reflected in the facsimile 3 in the Book of Abraham. When I state that Facsimile no. 3 depicts the deified deceased Hor “at the veil,” being introduced into the heavenly council or assembly, I have made an observation sustained by every single learned critic of the document. As every learned critic knows, in Facsimile 3, the gods who appear assembled in the council setting include Isis, Osiris, Ma'at, Hor, and Anubis.

Notes on Kolob

Kolob: A Genuine Conceptuality

By Kerry A. Shirts

 

John Ankerberg and John Weldon’s book Behind the Mask of Mormonism, contends that Egyptologists have proclaimed that nothing Joseph Smith translated in the Book of Abraham was correct. They quote an archaeologist, a Dr. Richard Fales as saying “Joseph Smith did not get right even one word in this whole translation.” 1 They then use Gleason Archer, a fine Bible scholar, as saying that the facsimiles have also been shown to be incorrect. “Their findings [the Egyptologists of 1912] was that not a single word of Joseph Smith’s alleged translation bore any resemblance to the contents of this document.”2