This is an archived copy of a post written by Conflict Of Justice (conflictofjustice.com). Used with permission: Conflict Of Justice may not agree with any alterations made.
What do Egyptologists say about the Book of Abraham? Any scholar who is worth anything will tell you they don’t know if the Book of Abraham is legitimate, because text source was lost and the context of the Facsimiles is different than the Egyptian source. Joseph Smith did not try to translate any text in the Facsimiles, and the scroll that he used for the Book of Abraham translation perished in a fire. So it would not be very scholarly to talk about an Egyptian “translation” that has never been claimed, or to comment on a scroll that hasn’t been recovered.
Racist ‘Egyptologists’ – Anti-Mormons claim Egyptologists have dismissed the Book of Abraham as a fraud. CES Letter quotes three academics. The problem is each of these academics lived two centuries ago and happen to be noted white supremacists:
Flinders Petrie
- Born in 1853, England.
- Son of a religious minister for the Plymouth Brethren sect.
- White Supremacist
- Helped found the Eugenics movement, which led to the Holocaust in World War 2. He proposed that “eugenics will, in some future civilization, carefully segregate fine races, and prohibit continual mixture.”
Archibald Sayce
- Born 1845, England.
- Ordained religious Reverend for the Church of England.
- White Supremacist who believed “Negroes of Africa” were “midway between Europeans and apes.”
- Born in 1865, Germany.
- White supremacist. He called native Europeans a threat to advanced civilization: “The people of the Great Northwest Quadrant, as far back as we know anything about prehistoric men, have all been members of the white race… and the ancestors of the population now living there were the creators of the civilization we have inherited… The Mediterranean was now the home of Greek civilization in the East and of Roman civilization in the west, but the failure of the Roman Senate to organize a successful government for the empire they had conquered… brought the whole world of the Mediterranean civilization perilously near destruction… The great problem for future humanity was whether the Roman emperors would be able to hold off the barbarians long enough so that in course of time these rude northerners might gain enough of Mediterranean civilization to respect it and preserve at least some of it for mankind in the future… but the church, taking its place, made possible the transference of power from the Roman Empire to the barbarians in the West, without the complete destruction of our heritage of civilization bequeathed us by Greece and Rome… while Mediterranean civilization steadily declined, it nevertheless slowly spread northward, especially under the influence of the Church, till it transformed the ruder life of the north.” (The Conquest Of Civilization)
- Strong defender for Catholic church. Did Breasted consider the Mormon church just another threat to the Church? Or maybe he hated the Mormon church for opposing slavery, I don’t know?
Racist Egyptologists Attacked Joseph Smith – Why does CES Letter gets its information from White Supremacist racists? One of whom worked with the founder of Eugenics? Considering how CES Letter calls Mormonism racist, this is not only a poor choice in judgement but also a huge double standard.
‘Oh but they were still experts in their field! Sure they were racists, but couldn’t they still be experts of Egyptology?‘
Were they experts in their field? Were they? James Breasted was a paid Rockafeller operative who was given huge grants from elitists to spread his racial theories. His other big contribution to science was his conscience theory that morality was the result of evolution and Morality was all relative. I don’t find any meaningful contributions to Egyptology from James Breasted, or any kind of expertise having to do with the Facsimiles or Book of Breathing texts. His close buddy, Archibald Sayce, at least took part in archaeological digs, but I don’t see where he studied anything having to do with the Lion Couch scene or anything else related to the Book of Abraham.
19th Century Ignorance – Very little was known about the Egyptians in the 1800’s. Each of these academics who bash the Book of Abraham lived way back in the 1800’s when little was known about Egyptology. This was almost 200 years ago. What did they know? Besides how to categorize people by race, I mean, what did they know? Their racial theories were some of their most prominent professional work, and it turned out to be very wrong and dangerous. So why should it be surprising that their professional comments about the Book of Abraham turned out to be based on ignorance as well? Not only should they be rejected for their hateful beliefs, their statements about the Book of Abraham make confirm that they were just ignorant blowhards.
There is nothing of substance in their statements. Here is what they said, after a cursory look at Abraham texts that they knew little or nothing about:
“It is difficult to deal seriously with Joseph Smith’s impudent fraud.” “It may be safely said that there is not one single word that is true in these explanations…” “…he was totally unacquainted with the significance of these documents and absolutely ignorant of the simplest facts of Egyptian writing and civilization”
(CES Letter’s authority on Egypology: 19th century racists)
Anti-Mormons are making an obvious blunder by relying on the word of incredibly outdated scholars.
Religious Bias
Each of these scholars had religious reasons to attack Joseph Smith. Archibald Sayce was a Reverend of a church who went by the name Rev. A.H.Sayce. Why does CES Letter change his name to Dr. A.H. Sayce? It’s almost as if CES Letter doesn’t want us to know about his religious motivations. The next scholar, Flinders Petrie, was the son of a Minister for a church. Flinders Petrie went into archaeology because of his father’s sermons about the pyramids. As for James Breasted, we can see that he considered the Catholic Church the bedrock of Western civilization, which he was determined to preserve.
What Do Scholars Today Say? – Today, scholars are more careful to avoid sounding foolish. The ones who do bash the Book of Abraham are obviously unqualified to say anything on this subject, as we can tell by their naive and simplistic statements.
Robert Ritner of the University of Chicago (coincidentally the same college where James Breasted taught) recently wrote an attack piece on the Book of Abraham, filled with all kinds of fallacies and falsehoods. Robert Ritner references James Breasted in his statement, who as we have already seen was a White Supremacist. Ritner sounds like a self-assured high school student in his paper, as if he read about the Book of Abraham on Wikipedia and thought he knew everything about everything. I don’t know what kind of religious bias Robert Ritner might have–I can only guess–but he certainly approaches the subject with a very poor understanding of the subject and embarrasses himself.
Why don’t qualified non-Mormon Egyptologists study the Book of Abraham and say anything about it? Well, it would be nice if some intelligent, knowledgeable non-LDS Egyptologist did study the Book of Abraham. But it would take a lot of time, because it is a very complex and unique subject. Dr. Hugh Nibley has written thousands of pages on the subject and it took him many years, endless hours of studying, to understand it. Why would a non-Mormon be interested in studying it? Also, because of the separation of the Abraham context with the Egyptian meaning, and because there is so much that simply hasn’t been discovered in archaeology, the most knowledgeable person in the world couldn’t really say conclusively whether Joseph Smith was right or not based on physical evidence.
CES Letter Logical Fallacies
| Falsehoods | CES Letter calls the 1800’s-era academics “respected Egyptian scholars/Egyptologists.” They were Egyptologists, yes, but they were not Egyptian scholars (as in, an Egyptian who is a scholar). CES Letter says they “are” respected scholars rather than they “were” respected scholars. This implies that they are still living, which is false. They lived in the 1800’s. |
| Repetition | I think what CES Letter meant to say is that they are were scholars of Egyptian studies and Egyptologists. In that case, this is redundant. CES Letter says the Book of Abraham issue “offers a real insight into Joseph’s modus operandi.” They use this term “modus operandi” three times throughout the PDF, basically every time they want to call Joseph Smith a liar. The term “Joseph Smith’s modus operandi” was invented by anti-Mormon Richard P. Howard of the RLDS splinter-sect who said the rediscovered papyrus fragment “discloses the modus operandi of Joseph Smith in determining its context,” but he never tells us what that process was. Neither does CES Letter. They simply use the term as a euphemism for saying he lied. |
| Shifting Goalposts | CES Letter compared the Book of Abraham interpretations to what “Modern Archaeology” says, in multiple arguments. But now suddenly they ignore modern Egyptology and archaeology, and instead quote three people from the 1800’s. Later, CES Letter attacks the LDS church for temporarily excluding people of African descent from priesthood positions. But here they are quoting White Supremacists to attack the church? |
| Appeal To Authority | These guys at first sound like they could indeed be “respected Egyptian scholars,” but I don’t see anything in their statements to demonstrate why the Book of Abraham would be false. What is their evidence? Why don’t they give any evidence whatsoever? When did these scholars study anything having to do with the Book of Abraham, the Facsimiles, or the Book of Breathing? What made them qualified? Besides, there is also a mountain of information that nobody knew about in those olden days. |
| Appeal To Ridicule | CES Letter says the Book of Abraham issue “both fascinated and disturbed” them. |
This is pretty sad of CES Letter. They dig up three quotes from 1800’s racial supremacists to convince us that ‘science’ contradicts the Book of Abraham? This shows just how sad and shallow their arguments really are. Especially after they just got done lecturing us about what “Modern Archaeology” says. That was all just a bunch of fake science.
Kafkatrapping – Then why does CES Letter risk this shallow argument? Because nobody bothers looking these people up, that’s why! In the hundreds of years since these 19th century academics and the many thousands of times Anti-Mormons have quoted them, has anything actually bothered to look them up? Has anyone uncovered their racist ideologies? I haven’t seen anyone talk about this.
It is easy for an atheist to throw around science buzzwords that people trust because they hear it so much on cable television. “Smith has turned the goddess into a king and Osiris into Abraham!” Oh boy, yeah, we can’t do that, can we? Wow yeah, that person sounds smart! Then someone who knows what they are talking about calmly explains why the Anti-Mormons are wrong, we are immediately rejected, because why would we have to go on for hours using archaeology that they’ve never heard about if our argument is valid?
That is what’s going on here. People are understandably wary of crazy history blogs on the internet, because they tend to use sophistry and make fringe claims that only university professors are qualified to talk about. So it is really useless to try to talk about this. Most people won’t trust my scientific argument. But the great thing is they don’t need to! The whole thing is moot, because the recovered papyri are not the basis for the Book of Abraham! This entire argument is built on a false strawman portrayal of what Mormons believe. It is an effective argument because people naturally trust scientific buzzwords over an unconventional book of scripture from some ancient prophet.
Just raising the question gives it some tiny amount of credibility. It’s all innuendo. This argument successfully uses the kafkatrapping tactic, where they begin with the frame that the Book of Abraham’s relationship with the bible deserves to be called into question, and then we simply buy into it. As one of the strongest physical evidences for the Mormon Church’s authenticity, this allows CES Letter to go on and use physical evidence as a wedge to attack the church. This leads to an obsession with truth that you can only see, and a superstitious outlook.
Fake Science – Satan wants people to pridefully think they know all about science, while in reality they know very little. This appeal to science helps Anti-Mormons because they can propagate fake science from 19th century racists to lead people astray. That’s why you have top “respected” scientists giving us “proof” for why God doesn’t exist, for example. Anti-Mormons accept this fake science without the slightest critical thought or understanding of nature’s laws.
Do You Want Evidence Or Relics? – Why does there need to be smoking-gun physical evidence at all? We are not a church that deals with relics, like pieces of Noah’s ark or the cup of Jesus Christ. CES Letter sets the narrative that we need to have some kind of physical objects, like the Catholic crusaders who scoured the Holy Land for objects from the bible. Well, the Mormon church does not do this, because any archaeological finding could be called a fraud, or dismissed as a coincidence, and real faith is not built on this kind of physical pursuit.
Superstition is spiritual belief built on a physical premise. Why is there lightning in the sky? Must be a manifestation of the gods! I think a better path toward truth is physical conclusions based on physical evidence and spiritual conclusions based on spiritual evidence. Does CES Letter believe in human evolution? Well, plenty of bones have been found to support this scientific model but there is no smoking gun; there are missing pieces of the puzzle, and it has not been reproduced in a laboratory or demonstrated in real life. It is still just a scientific model for what could have happened. The same goes for Book of Mormon archaeology. So many physical pieces of the puzzle have been found, but there are always going to be missing pieces, because we are talking about an ancient civilization that got wiped out. Anti-Mormons can always fall back on the missing puzzle pieces and claim “no archaeological evidence exists.”
The church has been upfront since the beginning. Back when the papyrus fragment was first discovered, Dr. Hugh Nibley, wrote a monumental explanation, ‘Joseph Smith Papyri,’ at the behest of the church, and it pretty well explains everything. But CES Letter doesn’t bother looking at it.
Satan tempts followers of Christ by telling them that God hasn’t answered their questions. This places the burden on “church authorities” to answer every little question in life instead of you finding out answers for yourself. CES Letter‘s logic reflect the simplistic idealism that we see in the Plan of Satan. This idealistic standard for “correctness” makes people bitter that God allows tragedies to happen in their lives. It makes them skeptical of any opinion that doesn’t fit their narrow preconceived view of perfection. It thus sets a narrative that destroys Mormons’ testimonies and promotes Satan’s agenda.
If they believe in nothing, Anti-Mormons have only their ideology, and they follow an ever-changing narrative to suit whatever lends to their ideology in that moment. So, if you can’t trust ancient scripture to be infallible truth, who can you trust? Science! Science will tell you all you need to know. Science is great for Anti-Mormons because conclusions are always changing, always updating, and are easily manipulated. The frequent shifts in science can be exploited to push a Satanic ideology. The Mormon method for determining spiritual truth using faith does not rely on 19th century racists, or on scientific fads, or on the mainstream media. We test the seed of faith by pondering, praying, and through deep research. We test and prove everything, and take nothing at face value. This is how I know the Book of Abraham is true. Besides the liberating holy doctrines and the witness from God of its truth, there are physical evidences that could only be miracles. The Book of Abraham is filled with remarkable cosmology and many parallel themes and stories that match other ancient Abrahamic texts–documents that were recently discovered and Joseph Smith couldn’t have known about. Fake science gives us political hackjobs and bigoted propaganda pieces, but the holy scriptures give us eternal truth and uplifting ideas. Its principles ring true and bring us closer to Jesus Christ.Complete answers to CES Letter questions about Mormons: